Chapter 15

15

A mbra shivers herself awake, and the bed is empty.

No other breathing person, no weight against her waist, nothing to keep her down against the bed.

Just chills and the expanse of the room in front of her, pointing her towards the door.

Light spills across the hardwood floor from the windows, giant and shining, and the dim roar of the morning traffic reaches even this far up.

Her heart hammers, jumping into her throat, before the whisper soft turn of a piece of paper kicks the rest of her brain into action.

She jolts upright, twisting, and Gurlien sits hunched over a scroll, propping himself up on the desk, fingers tracing along the aged page.

He’s wearing another one of the nice shirts, this one a beautiful deep maroon, darker than the color of blood. It draws the morning sun to his face, filling color in his skin, until he’s almost pristine with perfection.

Ambra swallows, reaching up and touching the shaved side of her head. It’s still prickly, but softer somehow against her palm.

“Good morning,” Gurlien mutters. “You sleep hard.”

Her mouth is dry, so she pulls herself up to the kitchen, filling the glass with water again, her heart hammering.

“Nalissa has an event in a week,” Gurlien continues, and she almost drops the cup. “Some sort of show she’s putting on, some sort of concert in the catacombs. Loose protections, tons of public, very few magical staff.”

She stares at him across the room. “How long have you been awake?”

He stretches, drawing more of her attention. “Hour and a half? Either we need to get a coffee maker for this place or we should go to a coffee shop.”

She stares at the glass of water, before taking a large gulp. Her skin feels gross, like the emotions somehow washed all over her from the night before and left their residue in the physical.

“A week?” she asks again, and her voice is small, unfortunately so.

“One week,” he confirms. “She’ll be out of her enclave, out from her protections, and surrounded by people.”

It’s officially too much of a good opportunity and too much for her to comprehend at the moment, so she grabs a change of clothes and marches over to the shower.

Once clean, her hair actually combed, and once dressed in a stretchy soft shirt that hugs the body, she deigns to follow Gurlien down the elevator and into the lobby of the building. He carries a heavy wool coat she saw him buy, and bullies her into carrying at least another sweater.

A few people stare at her tinted glasses and bright orange ear plugs, but Gurlien ignores them, instead striding straight out into the city .

Even with the ear protection, a wall of noise buffers against Ambra, but she blinks through it, letting her attention focus more on the cutting wind and the frigid air slicing against her skin.

Thankfully, Gurlien doesn’t speak, just lets her have the moment, before nodding and forging on. It’s a short walk to the small shop, and it’s full of people and bustling workers dressed in black.

“The noise will die down in approximately ten minutes,” Gurlien mutters to her, and despite everything, despite the volume and the earplugs, if she’s standing next to him, she can hear him perfectly. “This is just a rush around the start of business hours.”

“That’s good,” she mutters back, casting a glance behind her at the person who stepped way too close, but they don’t notice, and after the night before her heart jumps.

“Anything in particular you want?” Gurlien asks, and the menu doesn’t have anything particularly enlightening on it. “Want some coffee? You don’t look like you slept enough.”

She doesn’t exactly know what that means for her, but she rolls her eyes. “It tastes bitter.”

“I guarantee I can get something here that doesn’t taste bitter,” he challenges, as if he’s being aggressive to distract from her twitchiness. “You might feel better with some food.”

“Sure,” she replies, and another person steps in, forcing the line to compact a bit more.

“I’ll grab hot sauce,” he continues, obviously seeing her reaction.

“There’s an open table on the edge, I’m going to take it.” Barely waiting for him to nod in receipt, she ducks out of the line, sliding into the table before anyone else can take it.

It provides her with a decent view of the little cafe, with all the people bustling around, and Gurlien a solid figure in the middle, as if the rest of the world flows around him, leaving him untouched. Her back is to a wall, and the other side of the table is against the large floor to ceiling windows.

She touches her fingertips to the glass, and the chill from outside barely touches her back.

The city outside streams along, people blurring together from their fast motion, as if everyone needs to get to their location faster than the next. It’s almost hypnotic, something akin to sitting on the edge of a smaller ley line and watching the magic shift across the world.

Maybe that’s why the other demon chose to stay here. Unending views, never the same but startlingly uniform, so similar to the natural world that they were born for.

“You look hilariously punk with those glasses,” Gurlien says, startling her out of her thoughts, sitting down with a huff. He pushes a large, frothy drink across the table to her, plastic cup glowing with the cold, topped with whipped cream, then hands her a small sandwich.

“Is that an insult?” she asks, poking the cup.

“Not really,” he replies, setting down a plain cup of his own. “Axel swears that his ‘experts’ like that drink.”

Ambra raises an eyebrow at him over the tinted glasses, and Gurlien snaps a picture in the moment before she resets her expression.

“Why?” she asks, suspicious.

“Because it’s a bit funny,” he informs her. “When Chloe and I have cell signal, which we both do right now, we try to send ridiculous things to each other.”

A smidgen of discomfort worms its way inside of her, that she’s so easily perceived, so she unpeels the sandwich instead.

“So. You and Chloe,” she starts, then frowns at the food, despite the fact that Gurlien’s already casually eating his pastry. “How’d a dud like you end up working so closely with someone so powerful to break through the locking pits?”

He blinks at her, owlishly, like her words caught him off guard, before he sets down his coffee cup. “She heard I was kicked out and remembered me from school.”

Ambra pokes at the entirely unappealing sandwich, before Gurlien places a bottle of self-described ‘hot sauce’ in front of her.

“Use that,” he instructs. “Chloe’s like the little sister who annoys the shit out of you but also saved your life.”

Ambra nods, not quite sure what the emotions she’s experiencing are, but decides they’re something close to relief.

“Do Demons have siblings?” Gurlien asks, leaning forward and ducking his voice down just enough that the ear protection almost blurs out his words. “Is that a concept I should explain?”

“We have genetic siblings,” Ambra answers, idly taking a bite of the sandwich, and it’s a lot more appealing with the hot sauce. “Not the family structures of humans, but I’m familiar with how they work. Wights have huge, sprawling families, and we interact with them enough to know.”

A hint of a flinch, one barely caught, but Ambra seizes on it with both hands.

“You dislike wights,” she states, not a question but so he could deny it if he wants, “and yet you saved the crying one in the cell. Stella.”

“Wights dislike me is more accurate,” he mutters, and the lines around his eyes tighten.

“And Johnsin referenced them,” she forces the words past the same pang of loss, “and Axel said Zoel hated you, which seems like an awfully strong word for someone as utterly mild as him.” To act casually, she takes a sip from the frothy concoction, then jerks in surprise at the insane rush of sugar. “What the fuck?”

“Doesn’t taste bitter, does it?” Gurlien mutters, scowling at the remains of his pastry.

She takes another drink, and the chill of it numbs the roof of her mouth, derailing her thoughts completely. “And people consume this? On a regular basis?”

“Far more regular than you think,” Gurlien says, and for a split second, there’s a hint of panic behind the false mask of boredom. “Zoel and I had a…conflict…and I was on the wrong side of it.”

It’s wholly incomplete, but she just puzzles another sip of the drink.

“I’m still having trouble imagining him in ‘conflict,’” she says, and Gurlien looks away, out at the shop instead of her, and she doesn’t like that. “Do I need to be on the watch out for any Wights?”

“What?”

“Do I need to protect you from them? I can,” she says. “Even limited, there’s no way I wouldn’t win in that battle, and I can guarantee I’ll fight dirtier than any Wight ever would.”

“I believe that,” Gurlien replies dryly. “No, I don’t think I’m in any danger from them. They just don’t like me, and it’s for a reason I don’t like me either.”

She tilts her head at him, and her stomach drops.

“They’re far more likely to ignore me than hurt me,” he continues. “Which I can’t see them, so it’s fine.”

“You should like you,” she murmurs.

“That ship sailed a while back,” he says, sarcastic, before he rubs his eyes. “I don’t want you to fight for me.”

It’s similar enough to his freak out about using her as a weapon, so she doesn’t quibble about the differences in what she meant.

So she just takes another drink of the overly sweet concoction, and even though she makes a face at it reflexively, she doesn’t stop consuming it.

“I’m going to, though,” Ambra says, after a long moment of quiet between the two of them, in the bustle of humans moving around the shop, ever changing in volume and stasis. “Especially during this…” she points to herself. “If someone attacks you, I’m gonna attack back. You’re a necessary part in all of this, and I’m not going to lose that just because you’re weird with Wights.”

His lips twitch up at that.

“Though you’re statistically going to be in much more danger from other humans,” she continues, eating more of the sandwich after dumping another generous few shakes of the hot sauce on it. “Both as a reality of being human and because we’re gonna go after them.”

This shakes him from his slump, and he sits up straight, pulling out his phone.

“So Nalissa,” he starts, and she doesn’t flinch at the name, somehow, as he taps away, pulling up a few documents and spinning the phone around to her. “Axel pulled up these plans and Mel translated them.”

It’s a map of the catacombs, with the wide sprawling caverns marked with stages and crowd areas, and the skin on her arms prickles. There are gaps, large ones they’ll need to fill, but it’s a start.

“She loves music,” Ambra murmurs. “Always played it during the experiments.”

“Ghastly,” Gurlien remarks dryly. “Look.”

He points on the phone, at the ghost drawing of runes on the floors. Nalissa’s protections .

Wholly incomplete, but still, something to work with.

Stopping weaponry, controlling the sound to just the area, amplifying people on the stage but protecting their ears. Alarms for anyone teleporting in—there goes that idea—and alarms for anyone who is trying to attack the musicians.

“She thinks the musicians are in the most danger, not her,” Ambra says, and he nods, like he came to the same conclusion.

Which if he could read sketches of runes so easily, that’s good. It’s more fluency than most humans she’s encountered.

“She has to have heard about Johnsin, though,” Ambra says, and Gurlien equivocates. “Anyone would look at that attack and know it’s me.”

“His so called ‘public event’ is tomorrow,” Gurlien says, leaning back in his chair, and Ambra’s eyes are immediately drawn to him, at the straightness of his shoulders and the draw of the light to his skin from the color of the shirt.

Nobody else is watching him, which sits wrong. He’s striking in a room full of mundane, solid when everyone around seems transient.

“So if she finds out, it’ll be then.”

Ambra breathes out of her nose, shaking off the sudden lack of attention she had. “So we have to expect her defenses will strengthen.”

“Around her home, yes,” he says. “Did she know you hated loud noises?”

Ambra nods, of course.

“And lots of crowds?”

“Wasn’t around terribly many of those,” Ambra replies honestly. “But probably. ”

“Then she’ll view it as a defense as well.” His phone beeps and he pauses, reading lightning fast. “Chloe says she likes your style.”

“What does that even mean?” Ambra asks, almost exasperated. Of course she’s heard that slang, of course humans would say things like that to each other with her around, but she’s never had the freedom to fully ask about it.

“It means she thinks your appearance is distinctive and unique and not in a bad way,” he defines, typing back. “It’s a casual way of communicating approval.”

Which isn’t something Ambra ever thought she’d get from the alchemist.

Still, in the picture, the stubble on the side of her head sticks out, so she rubs at it, making a face at the texture, even as it’s softening.

“My hair never grew in dead bodies,” she mutters.

“And, see, she sent back a picture of my cat,” Gurlien continues, ignoring that last bit, showing the phone to her.

Indeed, there’s an image of a sleek looking tabby with narrowed green eyes, curled up on a couch pillow, appearing both content and peeved.

“It’s…cute?” Ambra ventures.

“Proper response,” he answers. “Unconvincing, but correct words.”

She rolls her eyes at him, but finds herself smiling all the same, before she shakes herself out of it. “So. Plan.”

He nods.

“We should be in the apartment for the time frame around them finding Johnsin,” she says. “It’ll be more secure and defensible if they choose the stupid option and try to attack me directly.”

“And not just pull you immediately,” he says, which she nods along .

“I’m hoping the scene persuades them that it would be a bad idea,” she says, then dumps a bit more hot sauce on the sandwich. “Enough that they think I’d be more…able to defend myself with less of them.”

“Do you think they’d buy it?” he asks, completely serious. Not patronizing, not talking down, but curious. “Axel and Maison are looking into the control, there’s no real theory behind that idea.”

She knows this, but she swallows. “I hope they'll see the destruction and have enough doubt. Enough doubt to not…hurt me.”

He watches her for a long second, then nods. “So we plan.”

The lump still sticks in her throat, so she swallows again, and someone passes a bit too close to them in the shop, giving Ambra a stare that makes her cringe away.

“Oh, hey, you’re okay,” he says, at something in her expression, reaching out and grabbing her hand over the half-eaten sandwich. “We’ll prep. We’ll gather information. We’ll get through this.”

“Thanks,” she replies, aiming for sarcastic and missing it completely. “It’s…weird. Spending your existence not being able to be perceived, able to fight or flee or be wherever you wanted, with no sensations to bother you.”

He nods, serious, and there’s some gratification that someone is taking her seriously. That someone is hearing her words, hearing how ridiculous they are, and still treating them as worthy.

“And then with this…the entire world is sharper,” she continues, a little bit softer, “light that didn’t faze you now hurts. Someone could strike me, and it’d cause pain. Things you did effortlessly take up a finite amount of energy that doesn’t just…spring back. Your fingers hurt if you move them wrong. You can feel all the magic around and touch all of it all but like a child, fumbling in the dark.”

“And your hair grows,” he murmurs, and he’s getting it. Relief courses through her, as sudden and as striking as a blow to the side of her head. “And the world isn’t kind and there’s a gaping cavern between your internal picture of yourself and where you are now.”

“Yeah,” Ambra says, muted, but holding herself still, holding the very air still around them. “Things are different and everyone can hurt you now.”

For a long moment, he doesn’t move, his face carved from perfect marble, before he nods, curt. “Exactly.”

As if brushing himself off from the conversation, he stands, the only remnant of stress in his jaw. “Do you want to sit here in this coffee shop and plan, or do you want to practice up in Alaska?”