“You okay?” Zeke’s alarmed voice came to her, distant as the moon.
“No.” She’d said it low and quiet, so maybe Zeke hadn’t even heard her, but Abraxas had, and he’d uttered a quiet laugh that sounded like her ruin.
He’d come back the next night, that time alone, and sat at her table. She’d been so nervous that she lost too many hands and finally closed out. He’d smiled and asked her to dance, and that had begun their affair. It had lasted a season and ended in bitterness, she unable to give him what he wanted, which was everything, and he unable to settle for anything less. They had drawn battle lines and then retreated to a truce, and there they had both stayed until Hypatia had broken their uneasy peace.
“He’s the one who told me about the Circle,” Hypatia said, bringing Celeste back from her memories.
Celeste cleared her throat, trying to buy some time to settle her thoughts. “I can’t believe you went to see him.”
“He knows more about this town and the Virtues than anyone.”
“He’s dangerous, Hypatia. I should know. You shouldn’t have done it.”
“Dangerous to you, you mean.”
“Dangerous to anyone.”
“You and Mariel are like kin to me. I’d do it again if I had to, but it’s not me he wants to see.”
It took Celeste a moment to comprehend her meaning, only because she didn’t want to. “Me?”
“I’m sorry, Celeste. I tried, you know I did. But it’s you who’s asking for help, so it’s you he wants to see.”
“You told him it was about Mariel?”
Her look was all sympathy. “Of course I did.”
Celeste rubbed at her temples. “I don’t know if that makes it better or worse.”
“He said he’d help, but you don’t have to go.”
For a moment, Celeste clung to her words and the excuse in them. But it wasn’t enough, and she knew it. “You said we were like kin, Hypatia, but do you have real kin?”
“You are my real kin. Everyone at the Eden is.”
“I mean blood kin, like a ma and a pa. Brothers, sisters, cousins.”
“A bushelful.” She smiled at some fond memory. “So many, and all of them underfoot when I’m back home. Siblings and nieces and nephews. Heaven and hell, I came to Goetia to get a little breathing room.”
Celeste folded her hands on the table, fingers gripping one another tightly. “I don’t have any. Both our parents are dead, and good riddance. But we never had any extended relatives, at least none they told us about. It’s just me and Mariel in all the world, and it pretty much always has been. All we got is each other, and I’d do anything to save her.”
“I was worried you’d say that.” She put her own hand over Celeste’s. “He said he’d meet you at the crossroads on the edge of town, just past the tent city, where Perdition and Zion Street meet. He said before dawn.”
It was still dark outside, but it wouldn’t be for long. Celeste made herself stand. “I better go then, while the sun’s still down, and I got the nerve.”
She said it like that, but if she was honest, under all that fear was anticipation. To her dismay, she realized she missed him, and despite the way it had ended—the way she had ended it—she wanted to see him. She just wasn’t sure why he’d agreed to this meeting at all. Abraxas never did anything out of kindness. He was a demon, after all. But whatever he wanted, even if it was only to hurt her, again, she would endure it.
“I’ll walk out with you. And Celeste…”
She looked up, hoping for a last morsel of sage advice.
But all Hypatia said was, “I’m sorry.”
CHAPTER 5
There were still a few Aventum stragglers on Perdition Street, but most had drunk their fill and found their beds. Clouds had moved in to blanket the mountains in a gloom, and the wind blew black ash down from the mine processing plants like tarnished snowfall. It made the air smell sweet, but it would eventually clog the roads and pile up on windowsills and rooftops, staining the city black until the next rain.
Detritus from last night’s festivities littered the streets. Clumps of parade confetti and torn-down bunting from storefronts clogged the gutters, all of it quickly blackening with ash. Celeste spotted discarded paper handbills from the exhibition hall advertising strange new wonders made possible by divinity. Mechanical creatures of various shapes and sizes, giant clockwork claws meant to make the mines more efficient, even a newer and faster flying machine of some kind purported to cut the travel from Goetia to the capital by half.
She spied Taborite automatons sweeping the streets, uncanny golden skin and faceless heads gleaming in the lamplight. A gunshot sounded from behind, and she jumped, anxious as a hen. Some drunk was shooting at one of the mechanical sweepers, laughing as he peppered its gilded frame with bullets.
“Fool,” she muttered, and hurried her pace.
The corner where Hypatia said the demon lord would meet her was deserted. To her right was the itinerant mining camp, no more than a cleared field where miners who could not afford four walls and a roof pitched their tents. It was a warren of twisting footpaths with no rhyme or reason, a dangerous sort of place populated by rough scrappers and heeled men looking for a fight. But now it slumbered, the workers given a day’s reprieve on account of the Aventum holiday.
Celeste shivered and huddled deeper in her coat, black ash falling around her. Perhaps Abraxas wouldn’t come, she thought, and she would be spared the torment of seeing him again. But that was a selfish desire, and one that brought on a mix of conflicting emotions. She reminded herself that she was here not for herself but for Mariel, so how she felt didn’t matter.
There was a wooden post to her right with all manner of handbills nailed to its front. She read over them absently until one caught her eye. It was a solicitation for houses in the Drench, bought for cash and quickly. The purchasing party was to be contacted at the Tabor mine. Intrigued, she tore the bill from the post, reading more closely. She wondered what had happened to her childhood home in the Drench, the place where she’d spent her early years. She had never gone back—too many unpleasant memories lurked there—and surely another family had claimed it by now.
Abraxas appeared next to her as if he had been there all along and she had simply not been looking hard enough. He wore a long black coat, a brimmed hat, and a narrowly fitted jacket and trousers of deep midnight blue. His teeth flashed white against ink-dark skin.
“Celeste.” He said her name like a prayer. Hushed, intimate, like she was something sacred. He leaned in close, and his lips brushed against her neck just below her ear. “Have you finally returned to me?”
She swallowed hard, fighting the desire that flooded her body. He smelled of rosewood and amber. If she closed her eyes, she could remember the taste of his mouth, cardamom and sin, and the rough heat of his hands as he unbuttoned her dress, palms sliding down her naked back.
It took all her willpower, but she stepped away, putting space between their bodies.
“I’ve only come to talk, Abraxas.”
“Talk.” He lingered over the word, lingered over her, his gaze appreciative. “What a pity.”