Chapter 24

24

D espite everything else, despite the two other glasses of water Gurlien bullies her into drinking, Ambra wakes with his arm loose around her waist and his breathing steady behind her, and her head aches.

“Oh,” she mumbles, and his arm briefly tightens, but the rise and fall of his chest remains steady.

Her head pounds, her mouth tastes like something dead crawled inside, and her stomach turns, despite the stillness of her limbs. Light winds its way underneath her eyelids, too piercing and too

This is what the experts meant by hangover.

Forcing herself to exhale through her nose, she sends a tendril of power to the thudding in her head, to the blood vessels throbbing, and it eases, just enough that she squints her eyes open.

Immediate mistake, and the light slams into her so hard she flinches back, the pain blooming brilliant once more.

Gurlien hmms behind her, a soft sleepy sound, not quite awake .

And if he’s going to feel a fraction of what she is right now, she doesn’t want to wake him further.

Gone is the looseness of her shoulders, leaving her with a stiff neck.

On the side table, her phone buzzes, and that must’ve been what woke her, and she mentally curses it for a few seconds, before it buzzes again.

“Okay,” she mumbles again, and snakes a hand out to it, wholly unwilling to move from underneath Gurlien’s arm.

Outside the floor to ceiling windows, snow batters the glass, swirling against it, and all she can see is the cloud and the snow. Even the other building across the city street is obscured.

And still the light is too bright for her.

Awkward, she slides the tinted glasses over her face, and it helps. Not as much as it usually does, but a bit.

T (9:22 AM): Food and caffeine and time will help the hangover.

T (9:23 AM): But everyone is different. Axel likes walks to get rid of his. If you learn what Gurlien does, it’ll be helpful.

Ambra blinks at her phone, and even her eyelashes stick to each other.

She sends another tendril of power to help with her headache, and it briefly offers relief, but the moment she focuses even a fraction of her mind on something else, the pounding returns.

AMbrA (9:24 AM): Gurlien’s still asleep, I’m not waking him.

She worries at her lip, the faint ghost of his kiss lingering like a bruise.

AMbrA (9:25 AM): My head hurts and food sounds awful. I ate last night, I don’t need to today.

T (9:25 AM): take it from me, you absolutely do. Even if you don’t have hunger impulses, you need it. It will calm the stomach and it will help with energy regeneration and steadiness and ability to grasp any magic.

Ambra raises an eyebrow at her phone. So this T person isn’t emotionally a demon, but that’s a very demon way of interpreting power.

AMbrA (9:27 AM): Why is kissing humans different in a live body?

T (9:27 AM): Oh good lord, I am not talking about that.

AMbrA (9:28 AM): Thanks.

Ambra lets her head thump back against the pillows, but they’re not even comfortable at this moment.

T (9:31 AM): I take that back. How drunk were you to kiss Gurlien?? Unless you’re talking about an entirely different human, which has different problems.

Ambra weighs being offended on Gurlien’s behalf, especially since this T person wasn’t even involved in Gurlien’s story of the ley lines.

And Gurlien says he’s never even met her.

But other people can dislike him, and from the glimpse of his story, she can understand why that entire group would have their defenses up, why they would judge him. If they hadn’t taken the time to learn him after getting out of the College’s grasp, then they would be stuck in their perspective of him.

Which is their loss. They don’t get to know the sharp intelligence, that hunger for knowledge, or the intentional, careful kindness, the sort of kindness that comes with a second thought instead of a first.

It means she doesn’t have to share with them, either, and that warms her.

AMbrA (9:32 AM): I think I had six glasses of wine .

She doesn’t know if he’ll kiss her while sober, and even with her head hurting, she hopes he does.

T (9:33 AM): Oh wow, yeah, you’re probably hungover as fuck.

That’s accurate.

T (9:34 AM): Don’t count on doing anything productive today. Today is a loss.

AMbrA (9:34 AM): I was planning on scoping out some of the outside protections in Paris.

T (9:35 AM): Don’t. Also, find time to get a passport if you can.

On the other side of the bed, Gurlien’s phone chimes, and he flails awake, sitting bolt upright with a gasp.

Ambra immediately misses the contact.

She turns over to face him. “It’s just your phone.” Her words croak out instead of anything smooth, and she scrunches her face at the sound.

He stares wildly down at her, before cramming his glasses on his face. “Oh my god, you’re already awake.”

She holds up her phone. “Your experts were texting about hangovers.”

He cradles his head, squinting against the brightness of the swirling snow outside.

“I’m so sorry,” he says, and there’s panic in his voice. “I didn’t mean to cuddle you, I…”

She blinks at him slowly. That’s what he’s upset about? “Gurlien, you’ve been doing that all week.”

He gapes at her.

She sits up carefully, and her head swims all the same. “Did you think I didn’t notice?”

“You didn’t say anything…” he trails off, then squeezes his eyes shut. “I can’t handle this right now. ”

“You want coffee?” Ambra offers, thinking back to his words the night before and to T’s advice. “My head hurts.”

“No shit,” he snips, before he rubs his face.

He’s still in the undershirt from the night before, and the shirt she grabbed by the collar lays crumpled next to the bed.

“What time did we get back?” he mumbles from behind his hand.

Ambra didn’t look at a clock when they did, so she shrugs, and her neck is way too stiff after the looseness of the wine.

Hand still on his face, he glances at her, like he’s searching for a clue in her appearance.

“What do you need?” Ambra asks, after the moment stretches on too long. “You’re trying to figure something out, what is it? I can’t help if I don’t know what it is.”

There’s another flicker of panic, before something akin to fondness crosses his face, and it’s so out of place among the physical misery he’s putting off. “Right, you’re a demon. Different cultural mores.” He sighs, rubbing his eyes once more, before he swings his legs over his side of the bed, steadying himself. “My memory is very fuzzy from last night,” he informs her, not looking at her, instead leafing through his bag of clothing.

She eyes his shoulders. “Define fuzzy.”

“I’m not sure what happened,” he says, and there’s a trace of embarrassment in his tone. “I was trying to figure out if I needed to apologize more.”

“No,” Ambra replies, and despite her stomach and despite her head, there’s a little bit of amusement worming inside of her. “No, you don’t need to apologize.”

It’s not something she’d considered, that he might not have even been aware of what happened. That he might not have a strong emotion about it, because he doesn’t even know it happened.

She hopes he doesn’t dislike the thought.

Instead of grabbing another button up, he shrugs a plain black shirt on over his head.

“Yes, coffee,” he says, attempting to comb through his hair with his hands and sending it sticking upright in every which way. “Coffee is needed. Yeah.”

Two annoyingly sweet espresso milkshakes and a muffin later, Ambra doesn’t quite feel better so much as she’s a little less miserable, though Gurlien still struggles to make it through his pastry, on his third cup of black coffee.

He’s surly, barely speaking, leaving Ambra to observe the world from their little corner of the coffee shop. Now the third day in a row, and the patterns of the noise have grown a touch more familiar, a touch less jarring, a touch less frightening. The same people work it, recognizing them with a smile, and the music playing over the speakers repeats.

And despite the unpleasantness of the physical body, Ambra definitely wants to sidle up to Gurlien, to lean against him, to have his hand touching her shoulder like it did at the bar.

“What parts of the night are fuzzy?” she asks, after he’s torn more of the pastry apart than eaten it.

He sighs, put upon.

“It’s not fuzzy for me, I can put it together for you,” she continues.

“I really don’t want to talk about it,” he mutters, then, “ did I…do anything untoward? By whatever standards you want to use?”

And Ambra’s first instinct is to immediately tell him no, to immediately make sure he knows he did no wrong, but she tilts her head, takes the moment to observe him.

Does he even want to know?

“I kissed you,” Ambra says evenly, after a long pause, and he groans, burying his head in his arms on the table. “And you broke it off and told me to not do so while drunk, but I wouldn’t…categorize that as untoward.”

Not for the first time, Ambra desperately wishes she could understand humans a bit better, but even when she shared a mind with one, they were still a mystery.

“I sort of remember that,” he says, muffled. “Sorry.”

She squints at him, and her head hurts just enough that she’s not sure she wants to be nice at the moment. “It wasn’t bad.”

“Thanks,” comes the rather sarcastic response.

But a twist of motion catches her eye, one that’s not in the human range of action, so she jerks up to look.

Outside of the window, giving her the most puzzled of stare, is a Wight.

It’s not one she knows—not that she knows or takes care to remember very many of them—but the Wight has wiry grey hair and lines on her face that echoes someone Ambra should know.

Careful, Ambra lets a bit of her power out to flex, making sure not to stomp over any protections or lines that the main demon would have left, just enough to entwine around the Wight.

She grimaces, and Ambra releases immediately.

Gurlien’s hand goes to his wrist, to the leash around it. “Did you do something?” he asks, voice still muffled, and Ambra remembers his story of the Wights, why they dislike him.

“Just investigating,” Ambra replies, and her stomach turns over, like accessing that part of her upsets the delicate balance of her body at the moment.

It’s odd to see Wights so far into a city, so far into a place of industrialization and pollution, but the Wight stays put, eyes locked onto Ambra.

So this one wants to talk to her.

Or Gurlien.

Which she wouldn’t let.

Finally, Gurlien lifts his head, and whatever he sees on her face sits him up bolt straight. “What is it?”

Ambra doesn’t let her attention wander, even though her head still throbs.

The Wight’s gaze flickers to Gurlien for a split second, the often familiar evaluation, before right back to Ambra.

So her.

“A Wight’s outside and she wants to speak to me,” Ambra says, and to her ears her words sound remote. “Nothing I can think to say can convey how much I really don’t want to deal with the Wight population right now.”

He grimaces. “In a city?”

“Right?” Ambra responds, and, finally, a trace of a smile flickers over Gurlien’s face. “I don’t…my head hurts and I don’t want to talk about anything they’ll talk about.”

Gurlien glances over his shoulder, towards her focus, then shakes his head. “Yeah, they’re not showing themselves to me.”

“Naturally, that’d be convenient,” Ambra says, then rubs her face, her eyes still too crunchy. “Stay here, I’ll be…I’ll be within 45 meters. ”

But the moment Ambra pushes herself up to standing, the Wight teleports away, because of course she did.

“Ugh,” Ambra says again, letting herself flop back into the chair. “She disappeared. Why…ugh.”

“Why would they talk to you?” Gurlien supplies, and she nods. “Either because you’re here with me and they know my face, or because you’re completely out of the norm and puzzling.”

“I’m not so puzzling that I couldn’t destroy her with a thought,” Ambra replies darkly, staring at the straw of her now empty espresso drink.

“I am too hungover for murder talk,” Gurlien mumbles, which is fair, then he sighs again, put upon. “I’m going to really regret this—”

This catches Ambra’s attention, and she sits up straighter.

“—but we should focus on what’s going to happen in Paris in a few days.” He pokes at the shreds of his pastry, a sour expression over his face. “Even if we get in there, even if we get through all the security and past the literal…metal music festival, we’re still going to have to see her.”

Ambra sits back, her stomach turning all over again. “Well, I’m not going to do it when I’m like this,” she mutters, gesturing at her head, then chews on her lip. “If she’s among the crowd I’ll just break her neck from a distance,” she says, and a passing human gives her an alarmed expression.

“That would be ideal, wouldn’t it?” Gurlien responds, then scowls at his pastry. “Let’s go get greasy food, this isn’t cutting it.”