“Promise me you won’t go rushing off to find Mariel on your own?” Zeke said.
“Of course.” Celeste felt numb, as if all the life had been drained from her limbs. She mouthed the words she knew Zeke expected her to say, but she didn’t know whether she meant them or not.
“Hypatia knows what she’s doing,” he said. “Give her time to work.”
She nodded, ready to be away from him. Not that he’d done anything wrong, but if one more person told her to sit and wait, Celeste thought she might scream.
She looked up at him, his brown eyes so sincere. The telltale gold ring around his irises glistened, and to her surprise, tears rimmed his water line.
“We’ll save her,” he said. “I know we will.”
“You’re a good friend, Zeke.” She touched his shoulder briefly and then retreated through the front door.
* * *
The Elysium Street boardinghouse had once been the home of a wealthy Goetia mining family, but the husband had died and the wife had gone mad, murdering her children in one of the bedrooms on the fourth floor and then leaping to her own demise from the widow’s walk above. Her paternal niece had inherited the house, declared it a home for single women, and promptly returned back East.
Insanity was one of the less-discussed side effects of mining divinity. Fallen were immune to it, but the Elect fell prey to the madness they called Abaddon’s Revenge. Not often enough to dissuade those seeking to make their fortunes but common enough that it had a name and various tonics dedicated to its treatment.
Most Elect wouldn’t set foot inside the boardinghouse due to its tragic past, which meant the women there were Fallen or the kind of women whom the polite society of the Elect had no use for—spinsters, sapphics, soiled doves. Celeste found their company a bonus rather than a burden. It was no exaggeration to say she preferred to spend her time with the damned, no matter what her blood might let her pass for.
Much of the house had run to just this side of shabby, but the parlor was still a grand affair. Brocaded wallpaper, leaded glass, and heavy mahogany wainscoting remained, befitting the grand place it once had been. The decor became noticeably worn as one moved farther into the house, and by the time one reached the rooms on the third floor where Mariel and Celeste lived, ornamentation was at a minimum. Plainly painted walls stripped of any wood or fabric that might have been resold for a profit were all that greeted her here.
She slid her key into a lock on a door that was hollow enough she could hear her neighbors coming and going whether she wished to or not. Once inside, she shut the door and secured the bolt. She was too anxious to make tea on the portable stove they kept for the kettle, so she simply sat at the table and waited.
She must have dozed off, because she woke to someone banging at her door. She rubbed her hands across her face, confused as to why she was sleeping in the kitchen chair, and then she remembered.
“Mariel,” she whispered, and rushed to answer.
It was Hypatia. The woman looked the worse for wear, her normally jovial face haggard.
“Did you find her?” Celeste asked, waving her in.
Her nod was grim. She dropped onto the wooden chair on the other side of the kitchen table. “Do you have coffee?”
“Can’t you just tell me?”
“Celeste, make me some goddamned coffee. I’ve been to hell for you, almost literally, and I think I earned it.”
Celeste stiffened. “Sorry.”
“And some for yourself, too,” she said conciliatorily. “I think you will need fortifying.”
She didn’t like the sound of that. “I have tea. Will it do?”
“If by tea you mean hot water and whiskey, then yes.”
Celeste rose and went to coax the burner on and place the kettle over the newly lit flame. She brought down the whiskey from the high shelf.
“The water will take time to boil. Tell me now. I can’t wait.”
Hypatia’s exhale was long and expressive. “They have taken her to the Virtues’ Circle.”
“What is that? A thing? A place?”
“I reckon it’s both. Some kind of special court where the Order of Chamuel presides.”
The kettle whistled, and Hypatia sat silently as Celeste readied the tea. Once done, she brought the kettle, cups, and liquor to the table.
Hypatia took the whiskey first and drank straight from the bottle, her hand gripping the neck like a lifeline. Celeste watched, worried. Hypatia was a woman who liked her booze, but she’d never seen her so distraught. Whatever she had done to track the Virtues had left her shaken. Only after the alcohol had begun its work did she speak.
“She is at the territory courthouse, likely because there is a jail there in its cellar, carved out of the natural rock. They’ve got angelic wards around the exterior. What that means I don’t quite know, but I was told it was important and breaking them would be costly.”
“Told? By whom?”
She held up a hand, indicating that Celeste should let her finish. “Whatever they think Mariel did, they mean to hold her without interference. Those Virtues must want her real bad.”
“So it’s murder she’s accused of, then.” Part of her had been holding out for a misunderstanding, something more reasonable, but she couldn’t deny the truth any longer.
The reality sat between them, heavy and undeniable now.
Celeste rested her face in her hands, overcome. “Heaven and hell, Hypatia. What do I do?”
“And here’s the hard part.”
She looked up, frowning. “Harder than Mariel arrested for murder?”
“I told you I’d call in a favor. Well, you might not like it, but he’s offered to help.”
“Who’s offered to help? What are you talking about?”
“Abraxas.”
“No.” One word, dead as her heart. “Anyone but him.”
Abraxas. Demon lord. A general in Lucifer’s army, left behind when the minions of hell fell in retreat an eon ago, when the earth was still soft and new. Abraxas. Devil. Monster. And the only man she’d ever loved.
They had met at the Eden. He’d come that first time surrounded by the prettiest creatures she’d ever seen. A brown-skinned boy wearing velvet brocade, eyes like a cat under curling raven locks. A pale slip of a girl in silk. Wan, fey, and as pliant as a wilted flower. And another, neither boy nor girl, long-limbed, smooth-skinned, and made of fire and lightning and teeth.
“He owns their souls,” Zeke had whispered as he and Celeste had watched from behind the bar.
“Thralls?”
He’d nodded. “What kind of person gives themselves to a demon?”
“A weak one,” she’d replied.
In that moment, Celeste had thought herself better than those pretty playthings who trailed him, dogs waiting for their master’s notice. Hubris, the ancients called it. It was an insult, to be sure, but it might as well have been a taunt. Celeste had made many mistakes in her life, but that one she regretted the most.
Abraxas’s crimson eyes had turned to her.
Celeste did not believe in love at first sight then, and she still did not. But what she felt didn’t have much to do with love, although that would come later. That night it was lust, pure and simple, although to call her feelings lust would be like calling a tornado a bit of a breeze. Desire roared through her, hungry like nothing she’d felt before, and she trembled.