Ghosts & Echoes (49 page)

“What are you going to do?” she asked.

After two silent circuits of her living room, he said, “Chicago. I’m going back to Chicago.”

“Just like that?” Her skin felt flushed, feverish with exhaustion, with held-back emotion.

Another circuit, and he stopped behind her, his hands resting on the couch back. “You can’t even look at me. Why would I stay?”

She wanted to tell him he was wrong, but the words stuck in her throat. “I failed him, Demalion. I failed him when I could have saved him. But I didn’t want to lose you.”

A puff of air, a bitter laugh. “But you don’t want to keep me, either.”

“You’re not mine to keep,” she said. “Are you? Wright had a life. That has to be broken down and dismantled. Your mother will want to know you’re alive. You have to go.”

“I’ll come back, Shadows. If you want.”

She shuddered. That was the worst of it. She didn’t want him to leave, didn’t want to send him off now that he was back, but she didn’t want to see him either, see Wright’s expressions slowly changed to Demalion’s, his memory erased. If she hadn’t been able to save him, it seemed only fair that she remember him as he was.

“Do you want?” he asked. He was very still behind her; the apartment was quiet, close to dawn, and she felt like she could hear their hearts beating in that silence, carrying on their own communication.

She couldn’t answer him, too conflicted. To say yes, the word burning on her lips, was to admit defeat, to erase Wright. If she said yes now, she wouldn’t let him leave the apartment at all. If she said no, he’d walk out and never look back. Demalion was a practical man at his core.

Silence seemed the only answer. And one he seemed to understand. He leaned forward, kissed her hair. “I’ll arrange for a flight to Chicago.”

THE SKY WAS TURNING GOLD AND PINK, STILL DARKLY SHADED WITH inky blue, when they pulled into airport parking. She stopped the truck, turned off the engine, but made no move to get out.

“You’re not even going to see me off?” he said. He hadn’t sounded hurt in her apartment as he’d made arrangements. Hadn’t seemed anything but calm. But this was a crack in his facade. It wrung an answer out of her.

“I can’t,” she said. Bad enough in the low light of the streetlamps. Seeing Wright’s face with Demalion’s soul in it under the sharp clarity of the airport lights would break her. Make the whole thing seem final, somehow. “I just keep thinking. He’s got a wife,” she said. “A six-year-old boy who likes animals.”

He got out, slammed the door, leaned into the window.

The hurt had faded, shifted into anger. It looked strange on Wright’s easygoing features, the mobile mouth drawn tight and flat.

“You aren’t even going to ask, are you? You’re just going to think the worst. You assume I pushed Wright into the general’s grasp and saved myself.” His hands were tight on her window frame, his face utterly still.

She hadn’t been able to bring herself to ask, had barely been willing to consider it—except she had been doing nothing but since Demalion said Wright was gone. He raised his hands finally and began walking away.

“Did you?” she asked. Her voice was so low he had to come back toward her to hear the question. The security guards at the booth eyed them cautiously.

Demalion leaned back in, brought his cheek close to hers, his breath warm on her throat. She swallowed hard.

“No,” he said. “I did not. Wright . . . jumped. We were both struggling, both battling, both losing . . . and Wright—he chose to save me.” Demalion sounded as wrecked as she felt.

It took her a moment to get her voice working. “It’s not right. He shouldn’t have had to die,” she said, a bare rasp. “And it’s not fair. But I am glad you’re alive.”

His hands tightened on her shoulders, an embrace disrupted by the door of the truck, his lips brushed hers; then he was gone, disappearing down into the stairwell leading to the terminal. She shifted position a couple of times the better to watch him go. Wright’s spiky blond hair the last thing to disappear.

It shouldn’t have made a difference. Wright shouldn’t have had to make that choice; she shouldn’t have put him in the position to do so. But it did. Knowing that Wright had made the sacrifice unwound the choking suffocation in her chest. His death was her personal failure, but Demalion hadn’t been responsible for it.

She had known Demalion the better part of two years, and in that time he had told her his share of lies. She’d caught him in enough of them that she had recognized one even with Wright’s less-familiar face masking them. This, this was truth. Painful and unwelcome. It hurt Demalion that he had been saved, relegated to helpless bystander, needing protection, stung his pride, maybe even caused him grief. If Sylvie had liked Wright, found him a wholly admirable man, Demalion, with a more intimate view, had known him better. Wright really had been a white knight.

Demalion had a hard road ahead of him, she thought. A life not his own, and his own rolled up and erased by the ISI.

In the meantime, Sylvie had Zoe to watch over—
out for,
the little dark voice suggested—and a bunch of cases piling up. She’d tried the easy case; maybe she’d see what Alex had in the hard pile. It couldn’t be worse. And tomorrow, she’d meet with Suarez, explain Odalys as best she could, then take him to see the wall of flowers that had once been a coven of would-be satanists. Show him that there was more to the
Magicus Mundi
than despair and death. There could be justice. There could be hope.