Six.
The Library of Dis was quiet when Elise appeared on its top floor. She couldn"t see beyond the stacks, but it felt like the whole tower was empty.
James collapsed beside her, shoulder slamming into one of the bookshelves. Elise couldn"t help but watch with pity as he vomited. Switching between dimensions had always been difficult on mortals, but James had begun growing accustomed to it. Now it was like he had never phased before in his life.
When he finished, she helped him to his feet without remarking on it.
James pulled away from her touch far too quickly.
Elise emerged from among the stacks. When she looked over the railing, she realized that the library wasn"t unoccupied after all.
In fact, half of the Palace"s residents were packed inside the library. The lower levels were so full that there was no room to walk without running into people.
She couldn"t hear any of them talking. It was still whisper-quiet, the perfect atmosphere for study.
"What in the world?" James asked.
"The librarians must have enchanted the upper levels to be quiet," Elise said, skimming the minds of everyone below her. They were mostly human. They were afraid.
Not a good sign at all.
Elise climbed down the spiral stairs. A man waited for her at the bottom, looking totally unsurprised by her appearance, as though he had known the instant that she had phased into the Palace.
He very well might have. Gerard, like Elise, was blood-bound to the Palace wards. He always seemed to know what was happening within their walls.
"Explain," she said by way of greeting.
"It"s the sky," Gerard said. "It peeled open. We had to move everyone inside where it was safe."
"What do you mean, peeled open?"
"The atmosphere"s gone all inhospitable to humans. Most demons, too." Someone b.u.mped into Gerard, nearly knocking him into Elise. "Can"t go outside at all without risking death. It"s bad, Elise, it"s real f.u.c.king bad. Wards on the library are strongest, so everyone"s here for now."
There weren"t many bathrooms in the library tower, no kitchens, and definitely no dry baths. Conditions must have been very bad indeed to use it as a refuge.
Gerard wasn"t the only one who had noticed Elise"s arrival. Murmurs spread through the ground floor as people stopped to look at her-some wearing pajamas, like they were in the middle of the biggest, most depressing sleepover ever.
Elise saw more than a few smiles. They thought she"d come to save them.
"f.u.c.k," she growled, ma.s.saging her temple.
James"s hand brushed the small of her back. A brief gesture of comfort, which he quickly withdrew.
The reminder that her former aspis couldn"t look at her or touch her anymore wasn"t, unfortunately, very comforting.
"You didn"t come back for us," Gerard said, giving her a too-knowing look. "It"s worse on Earth, isn"t it?"
"It"s still habitable for the moment." She grimaced. "I didn"t come here to give help. I came here to get it. Is Paimon with you?"
Gerard jerked his chin toward the s.p.a.ce underneath the stairs, and Elise turned.
Someone approached from among the stacks. It wasn"t the short, frog-like librarian who emerged, but a woman wearing steel-heeled boots, a cropped Original Sin shirt, and a latex skirt. She held a dog"s chain wrapped around one hand. On the other end trotted Ace.
Neuma"s face brightened at the sight of them. "Elise! You"re alive!"
For an instant, Elise forgot everything about the looming apocalypse. She dropped to one knee beside her dog, earning a swipe of his smelly tongue along the side of her face. She scratched him between the shoulder blades. His tail thumped against the ground.
Neuma embraced her tightly the instant she stood again. Elise didn"t have to pretend that she was happy to see Neuma, too-not when Elise had left the Palace thinking that it would be the last time she"d see her friend.
One of Neuma"s arms was occupied with a bundle of books.
"Light reading?" Elise asked.
"I"ve been pulling books out of the stacks because me"n Gerard were trying to find a fix for, you know, that." She pointed at the ceiling. Elise took it to mean the broken sky beyond. "And I was back there letting Ace take a dump, too. Stay out of the books on human history from 1780 to 1799."
Paimon must have been really distracted if he wasn"t freaking out about a dog s.h.i.tting in the library.
"Have you found any information in the books?" Elise asked.
"Not yet. Problem is, there are a lot of books, and we"re too busy to search fast. The staff"s freaking out." Neuma pulled a face. "I could distract "em all, but making a bunch of scared people h.o.r.n.y isn"t real helpful."
"I"ll have to redirect your attention again," she said. "I need your help with something more urgent. Apocalyptic, in fact. I"m sorry."
"Ain"t it always? Don"t tell me. Mobilize the army."
"I"m so transparent."
Neuma didn"t smile. "Bad news about that, doll. The army"s down to less than half the numbers you had when you left last time. Lots of them got sucked out of Dis when it first ripped open."
"Sucked out?" James echoed.
Now she found her smile-a heavy-lidded expression that managed to look invitingly seductive despite the circ.u.mstances. Neuma had always had time to hit on people she found attractive. "Yeah. Sucked. It"s a lot less fun than it sounds."
"It doesn"t sound fun," he said, though the tops of his cheekbones were colored a faint shade of pink.
"On the bright side, I"ve already got the surviving army ready to go, "cause Dis obviously isn"t safe anymore. We can move as soon as we find a way out of here," Neuma said. "Jerica"s looking for one right now."
"Good thinking," Elise said.
"Earth is in our sky. Doesn"t take much thinking to tell when it"s time to evacuate." She planted a kiss firmly on Elise"s lips. "I"m just glad you"re alive to come with us." Neuma swatted Elise"s b.u.t.t, and then James"s too, for good measure. He jerked away from her. "Nice to see you too, handsome."
James turned to watch her leave the library. It would have been difficult for anyone not to. Neuma"s draw as a half-succubus was almost as compelling as Elise"s, except that Neuma made no effort to hold it back. And her a.s.s did look great in the skirt.
"I"m going to find Paimon," Elise said.
He didn"t respond until the door swung shut behind Neuma, concealing her from view. "Paimon. Yes. Right."
Elise"s brief amus.e.m.e.nt at James"s expense vanished as soon as she waded back into the crowd, trying to reach the opposite shelves.
Her staff stepped back as she pa.s.sed them, making room for her and Ace. Like James, none of them wanted to touch her, though they hung close enough to stare.
Their emotions were overwhelming in such close proximity-even more overwhelming than the smell of hundreds of people who hadn"t sc.r.a.ped the stink of sweat from their bodies in days.
So much fear, hope, and despair. All of it focused on her.
It didn"t get better when Elise climbed the stairs. The refugees were on the second and third stories, too. All watching. Waiting to see what she would do.
Paimon wasn"t on any of the lower floors. "Has anyone seen the librarian?" she called, loud enough for the nearby staff to hear her.
Those near enough to hear her shook their heads.
She headed upstairs to continue looking, and James accompanied her at a safe distance. "I can begin combing the library for information while you look for Paimon," he suggested from a few steps below her. "I became familiar with the organization of the stacks while designing Lincoln"s cure." The cure that he had ended up using on himself as well.
"Okay. Take a look." She pa.s.sed Ace"s chain to James. "I"ll be right back." The pit bull didn"t seem happy about the transfer. His ears flattened to his skull. A low growl rumbled from the barrel of his chest. "Be nice," Elise said, fixing Ace with a hard look.
Without a mortal to hold her back, she could search by phasing into shadow and darting around the tower.
Despite the size of the library, it didn"t take long to determine that Paimon wasn"t there at all.
She rematerialized a few minutes later beside James.
He had looped Ace"s chain around the nearest lamp, forcing the dog to stay behind as James searched through the books. Apparently, the two of them hadn"t been able to get along for all of sixty seconds-the hems of James"s slacks were tattered with the imprint of canine jaws.
"No librarian?" he asked, plucking another book off the shelf. "Will you go organize the army, then?"
"Yeah," Elise said.
But she didn"t leave.
James didn"t ask why she was hanging around. He just kept searching through the section, selecting books, tucking them under his arm. She shadowed him as he looped around almost the entire floor.
Finally, he stopped searching. "Okay," James said. "Tell me what"s bothering you."
She took one of the books from him and drummed her forefinger on the spine. "It"s Nathaniel. He accused me of abandoning him when we escaped from Araboth."
James slowly tugged another book off the shelf, tucking it alongside the others in the crook of his arm. Elise watched as he struggled to think of something to say, but no consoling words came to him.
He set all of his books down with a sigh. "Elise..."
"He"s right to be p.i.s.sed off at me," Elise said. "I did abandon him. For years."
James wrapped an arm around her shoulders, pulled her to his side, and rested his head atop hers, though she knew it must have been difficult to touch her like that. His muscles were too tense to make it seem like a casual gesture.
"You warned me not to leave Nathaniel behind," Elise said, arms stiff at her sides. She couldn"t bring herself to return his hug. "You were right. He was a kid who"d just lost his mother, gotten killed, and come back as an angel. Even an adult wouldn"t make rational decisions at a time like that. He had no idea what he was choosing to do."
James"s thumb rubbed over her shoulder. "You were treating him as an adult. You couldn"t have known how it would turn out."
"But you knew." She swallowed hard. "I failed him."
A wet cough drew Elise away from James. She turned to see that Paimon, the little frog-like librarian, had finally arrived. His slight figure was overwhelmed by the size of his cloak, but the air around him vibrated. Even Ace wasn"t trying to bite him. The dog was flattened to the ground, eyes wide, tail tucked.
"You"ve been looking for me," Paimon croaked.
She had been, and she should have been relieved to find the librarian. But this was the second time now that someone"s arrival had interrupted a conversation with James. She would have given everything she owned in the Palace for a few peaceful minutes alone with him.
"I need to learn about the geneses," Elise said, shoving aside her annoyance. "Most importantly, I need to know how to take G.o.dhood away from the pantheon."
Paimon gave another wet cough. "Then I think it"s time." He beckoned Elise toward him with a crooked finger. "Lift your shirt."
She pulled the hem of her shirt to her ribs. Paimon tapped her back a few times, muttering to himself. He was inspecting the faded marks that James had tattooed alongside her spine years earlier, which collectively served as a skeleton key for the entire Palace.
His finger finally stopped just above her hip. He made a satisfied sound.
"What are you doing?" Elise asked.
She twisted to look back at him just as he drew a metal prod from the depths of his robes. It burned with white-hot light.
Paimon drove it into her flesh.
Even Elise wasn"t impervious to that much heat. She jerked away with a hiss of pain. Ace gave a single, disapproving bark, though he didn"t try to bark again once Paimon glanced at him.
"There," the librarian said.
Elise couldn"t see what he had done. "Is that another key? One that wouldn"t have been in Abraxas"s book?"
He folded the prod back into his robes. "My work is done here, Father. It"s time for me to rejoin the other librarians in the beyond. With any luck, we"ll not see one another in the next genesis."
"What"s going to happen?" Elise asked, rounding on him. "What do you know about the next genesis?"
But Paimon gave a flick of his robes, lifting the material above his face for the briefest instant.
When the hem dropped, he was no longer inside. The cloth puddled at Elise"s feet.
Suddenly brave, Ace nosed around the material, but there was nothing to find.
Paimon was gone.
He hadn"t even told her what to do with that d.a.m.n mark. It still itched. "Is it a key?" she asked James, twisting around to try to see it. The placement made it impossible. She might have been able to turn incorporeal, but she wasn"t a contortionist.
"Hold still and let me see," James said. She stopped moving, and his thumb brushed over her skin. "This mark has been branded rather than tattooed, the way we did the others. But yes, I believe it"s another key."
His hand dropped to the line of her hip just over her pants. He finally looked at her face, allowing her to get her first good look at the brown in his eyes. The outer ring was dark, the color of soil, whereas his irises were a mossier shade of green toward the center.
Elise liked the brown on him much better than the angel blue, she decided.