Five minutes after Seth left, I realized I'd made a mistake. Not about refusing him - that was the right thing to do. But I shouldn't have let him walk out like that. It was no way to end a fight.
I was still angry after all these years that Andrew had died helping those people. I was still pained by his loss. To this day, I believed my stand in the garden had been correct, but nonetheless, I'd always regretted the separation that followed. Anger and pride had come between us, keeping us apart until it was almost too late. Even disagreeing with each other, we shouldn't have stayed away. We should have talked and tried to find some compromise.
I refused to let this fight foster more bad communication and confusion between Seth and me. I wouldn't let it take away from the time we could have together. I had to fix things. Resolved, I grabbed my coat and purse and headed out the door after him.
I half-walked, half-jogged down to the bookstore, where he'd left his car, but it was gone. I'd missed him. I stared at the empty parking lot for a few moments and then went inside. I'd finally bought Carter's stupid Secret Santa present and had left it in my office earlier. But when I went back inside and stuffed the gift in my purse, I found I didn't have the will to head back out. Instead, I sank into my chair and buried my face in my hands. How had things gotten so muddled with Seth and me? Had the shooting really given him such a new perspective on life? Would this have happened anyway?
Yasmine's signature suddenly filled the room, and I looked up just in time to see her and Vincent materialize in front of me. Immediately, Seth left my mind.
"Hey, Georgina," Vincent said. "I got your mess - "
"I know about Nyx," I blurted out.
Astonished silence hung in the air. I couldn't say for sure with nephilim, but I knew angels were rarely caught by surprise. Yasmine clearly had been.
And, being an angel, she didn't try to deny anything about Nyx. She simply asked, "How?"
"Because she's using me to do her dirty work." Their looks of amazement grew. "Only...I'm not exactly sure how she's doing it."
The two of them glanced at each other, then back at me. "Start from the beginning," said Yasmine. "That's usually the way to go."
And I did, first telling them about the dreams and the energy loss. After that, it was on to my weird knowledge of tragic events and the residual feelings of Nyx's activities. Finally, I explained how Erik and Dante had pieced it all together, linking what was happening to me with all of those unfortunate news stories.
Yasmine sat down in a folding chair, tipping her head back as she thought. It was kind of like what Vincent had done in the hospital while ruminating. I wondered if it was one of those unconscious gestures couples sometimes picked up from each other. "Hmm...brilliant. That's how she's doing it without us finding her."
"I never would have even thought of that," agreed Vincent, pacing. "Which, of course, is the point."
"You know what she's doing to me, then?" I asked eagerly. The not-knowing was killing me.
"Yep," said Yasmine. "But let's get the others first."
"The other - "
The question faded from my lips as three figures materialized in the room: Carter, Joel, and Whitney. Angelic auras crackled around me. I couldn't help a little envy. It might take me days to hunt down higher immortals, but Yasmine could do it with a thought.
Carter smiled when he saw me. Joel looked outraged. Whitney looked confused.
"What's going on?" Joel demanded. He seemed as angry as the last time I'd seen him. It was a good thing he was immortal, or he probably would have died from high blood pressure ages ago. "Why have you brought us to this...this...place." You would have thought he stood in an opium brothel, as opposed to a tiny office with badly painted walls.
Yasmine leaned forward in the chair, hands clasped under her chin and elbows on her knees. Her dark eyes sparkled with excitement. "We've got her. We found her - or rather, Georgina found her."
Joel and Whitney appeared flabbergasted. Carter didn't. From the look on his face, I felt like he'd been expecting it.
"I can't believe it took you this long to figure it out," he joked.
Whitney was not amused. "Explain this."
Yasmine did, and when she was finished, the others were as impressed as she and Vincent had been earlier. Even Joel looked a little less pissed off.
"Ingenuous," he murmured. "Every time she escapes, she always thinks up a new way to elude us."
I looked from face to face. My emotions were raw after the blowout with Seth, and I was really low on patience at the moment. "Will someone finally tell me how I fit into this?"
Carter walked over to me. He wore a beat-up blue flannel shirt and a Mariners baseball cap that looked like it had been put through a wood chipper. He was still smiling.
"You must know by now that Vincent's a psychic. He's attuned to our world and in some ways has a higher sensitivity to supernatural activity than some of us do. It happens with humans sometimes." It was true. Angels weren't omnipotent and didn't possess all gifts. I nodded along, not letting on that I knew Vincent was actually a psychic nephilim. "Normally, he'd be able to find her trail pretty quickly. When she runs amuck feeding off mortal chaos, there's a kind of, I don't know...magical residue left where she's been. The energy she steals only sustains her; it isn't actually enough to obscure her. Someone like Vincent can..."
Vincent helped him out. "...sniff her out. I'm a paranormal hound." Yasmine snickered.
"He hasn't sensed anything so far," Carter continued, "which is why we were having to do more mundane searches, like looking for telltale patterns in the news."
"So...she was hiding her trail." I shrugged. "How do I fit in?"
"She was using you to hide it. In a couple different ways. Kind of a fail-safe, really. In taking energy from you and human victims, she was able to double her stash. It made it easier to hide from us. When her power dipped, I think she was actually...hiding in you."
"Ew." I suddenly felt violated. "How is that possible? Is she...is she there now?" I glanced down at my lower body, as though I might actually see something.
He peered at me. "No, I don't think so. She's probably got enough energy to run loose for a while. As for how she does it...well, life and energy move in and out of you, and at some level, she's both of those things. You're a conduit for those forces."
"I wish people would stop calling me that. It makes me feel like a machine."
"Hardly. The merging she does with you is how you occasionally get a sense for what she's been doing. Some of the details of her mischief leak into you, though she goes to great pains to hide it - and herself."
"How?"
"The dreams," said Vincent. "She's distracting you with them. Happy, consuming dreams that you're starting to obsess on. Your subconscious is so enmeshed in them at night that you don't notice her leaching the energy while you sleep."
I leaned back in my chair, dumbfounded. I'd dealt with a lot of weird shit in my life - an exceptional amount of it occurring in the last few months, actually - but this was shooting to the top of the list. My skin crawled, and I had the surreal sense that my body was no longer my own.
I was also kind of bothered by the fact that my dreams had been red herrings, meant to throw me off the path of what was going on. They were so sweet...so powerful. I treasured them, yet it seemed they were nothing but lies. Illusions created by a monster to hide her parasitic control of me. That knowledge cheapened the beauty of what I'd seen. I loved the little girl. I wanted to believe in her. I wanted her to be real.
"Well," said Joel brusquely, narrowed eyes fixed on me. "We've got to use the succubus to lure Nyx out." He gestured to me. "Go. Go out and seduce some poor soul, so Nyx'll come back."
I flinched. Yasmine glared at him. "Can't you see she's upset? Show some compassion."
"Denizens of evil deserve none," he muttered.
Across the room, Whitney stood by the door. She'd spoken little, so her voice startled me. "All creatures deserve compassion." I looked up and met her eyes. They were dark and bottomless, filled with power and emotion. I had the sensation of falling into that blackness, much like I experienced with Carter sometimes. I decided I didn't like hanging out with angels. They did a lot of soul searching - and usually it involved mine.
More awkward silence fell. "Okay, okay," I said. "We don't all have to spill our feelings and hold hands here. Tell me what you need me to do."
"You're going to be bait, Georgina," said Carter.
"I'm always bait," I grumbled. "Why is that? Why do these things keep happening to me?" Not too long ago, I'd had to play bait for a date-raping demigod. I hadn't been any happier then than I was now.
I expected a joke, but Carter's response was serious. "Because you're one of those unique individuals whom powers in the universe tend to gather around."
That was worse than being a conduit. I didn't want any of those things. I didn't want to be a target. I wanted my quiet life back where I worked in a bookstore and had a blissful, perfect relationship with my boyfriend. Okay, I'd never had such a relationship yet, but a girl can dream.
Dream.
Bad choice of words.
"Unfortunately," said Yasmine delicately, "Joel is right to a certain extent. We do need you to, um, replenish your energy in order to lure Nyx out." Joel grimaced.
I sighed. "I know this is important...I don't want her to hurt anyone else, but well, does it have to be tonight? Can we do it tomorrow? I just...I just don't feel up to it." Not after Seth. Not after any of this. I was so, so mentally exhausted. Sex sounded nauseating, energy or no.
Joel clenched his fists. "Don't feel up to it? This is no time for whims! Lives are at stake - "
"Joel," said Carter. It was one word, but it was hard and powerful. I'd never heard lax, sarcastic Carter speak in that sort of tone. He and Joel locked gazes. I couldn't assess higher immortals' power, but I knew Carter was pretty damned strong. Stronger than Jerome, even. "Leave her alone. Nyx only attacks when she steals more energy anyway. We should be okay for one night."
If I didn't know better, I'd say Joel was afraid of Carter. Joel looked very much like he wanted to say a lot more, but he backed down.
"Fine," he said through gritted teeth.
I shot Carter a relieved glance. With the way I felt tonight, I probably would have had about as much luck trying to seduce someone as Tawny. Thinking of the other succubus, I wondered if I should mention my suspicions about Tawny being drained by Nyx too. In the end, I decided against it. That whole situation was still circumstantial. I let it go.
Yasmine stood up and laid a hand on my shoulder. "Rest up. You look terrible. You need to be ready for tomorrow."
"Yikes. I can look like anything I want. When someone tells me I look terrible, it's pretty serious."
She smiled. "It's more than physical."
She vanished. Whitney and Joel did the same a few moments later. Only Carter remained with Vincent and me.
"It's going to be okay," Carter told me.
"I don't know. There's a crazy chaos-eating monster flitting in and out of me," I said. "You're going to try to frisk her out. Seems like there's a high likelihood things might end up pretty not okay."
"Ye of little faith." He too disappeared.
Vincent and I stood there for several moments. Finally, I sighed once more.
"Fucking angels."
He touched my shoulder. "Let's go back home."
We ventured back into the cold and walked to my apartment, saying little. Vincent look tired and thoughtful, no doubt from all the Nyx stuff. As we approached my apartment, however, his expression began to change. At first, he simply looked puzzled. Then he grew surprised, then startled, then horrified, and finally, disgusted. We stopped on the building's steps.
"What's wrong?" I asked.
He pointed upward. "There's something...evil in there."
"Like...my apartment? Because, you know, I'm technically evil..."
Vincent shook his head. "No, no. It's a different kind of evil. You're evil by nature - no offense. This is something different. A created evil. It's black and wrong. Unnatural. You know of anyone else who lives in the building that plays for your side?"
"No. Just me."
He grimaced. "Well, let's go in then and see where it's coming from. Ugh. To my senses, it's like...rotting garbage."
We went inside, and it didn't take him long to figure out where this different evil was coming from. My own apartment.
"Told you I was the only evil thing in here," I joked. But I was a little uneasy at his reaction.
Vincent didn't respond and simply pushed past me, searching in a way that brought the earlier hound reference to mind. He disappeared into my bedroom and reemerged with Dante's arts and crafts project.
"This," declared Vincent, holding it at arm's length.
"That?" I asked, astonished. "That's...nothing."
"Where did you get it?"
"This guy I know made it. The one who was helping me. He's, I don't know...a pseudo psychic. Maybe a real psychic. Interprets dreams and claims to be a magician." I stared at the wicker ball. "Are you saying he really is a magician?"
"Oh, he's something all right. This thing is so filthy, I can't believe you can't feel it. Well, I can believe it...I mean, it's a different sort of magic than you're attuned to, but Jesus. It makes me feel like I just...I don't know, went swimming in a sewer."
"Well...I know he's supposed to be, like, bad...he and another friend have said as much. But...I don't know. I thought it was just hype."
"There's bad and there's bad," Vincent said. "And this is bad. This thing's a repellent, right? Did he give it to you to keep Nyx away?"
"Yeah...but he wasn't sure if it'd work..."
"Oh, it'd work. It'd keep about anything away. To make something like this...man, Georgina. It's incredible - the kind of power required. Very few humans are born with this kind of power. He certainly wasn't. This is stolen power."
"Everyone steals power," I noted dryly. "Me, Nyx..."
Vincent's eyes were hard. "You and she suck it from people. This was ripped out of someone. The way you'd rip someone's heart out of their chest."
"So, what..." I stared. "Are you saying Dante killed someone to make this?"
"To make this specifically? Perhaps. But someone would need to already possess great power - independent of what he might put in this - to even attempt making it. And to be someone with that kind of power in the first place, he had to have done something, at some point in his life, that was bad."
"Like...killing someone."
"More than that. A special killing - something sacrificial. You know the kind of power those can yield."
I did. I didn't have a choice in the succubus soul-stealing thing, but I tried to keep my hands clean of other atrocities. Still, you couldn't work for Hell and not know about the full range of evils out there and how to achieve them.
"And," continued Vincent, "you know that the greater the impact - the greater the meaning - of a sacrificial killing..."
"Right. The greater the power." Goosebumps rose on my neck as I started to see where Vincent was going with all this.
"Whatever he did to get this kind of power wasn't just some random, clean killing. It had meaning for him. And it was horrible. He would have had to turn on himself - give up part of his humanity - to get this kind of power."
I stared at the wicker ball. I couldn't sense what Vincent could, but now I too was feeling disgusted and uneasy by its presence. And suddenly, Kayla's repulsion suddenly didn't seem so strange after all. I'd had the charm in my purse when I saw her. She'd said I was 'bad' because I was probably covered in the charm's power. What had Dante done? What act could sarcastic, laconic Dante have done to achieve the kind of power both Vincent and Hugh had said would be needed to make this kind of charm? Whatever it was, it was the reason Erik hated him.
I shivered. "Can you destroy it?"
Vincent nodded. "You want me to?"
A tiny part of me remembered that it had the ability to repel Nyx. But it wouldn't make her disappear, and we needed her to come back if we were going to stop her for good. Swallowing, I nodded. "Yeah, go ahead."
It took only a few seconds. Green light encased the wicker sphere, then Vincent's hand was empty. I'd felt no change in power or anything, but the nephilim looked relieved.
I exhaled. "Well. There's nothing to stop her now, huh?"
"Nope," he said, rubbing his hands together. "Get ready."