Banishing the Dark
Page 56

And it was the only real lead we had, other than the last line from Wildeye’s diary page: “3AC 1988.” Lon and I had puzzled over this since we left Golden Peak, trying to see how—if—it fit together with my Arcadia Bell alias, but to no avail.
As I wrapped the servitor soap doll inside a washcloth and tucked it into my overnight bag, I thought about everything Payne had said in the temple, all his crazy beliefs about the Serpent and Sophia. After all of that, I really didn’t know if it got me any closer to understanding what my parents had planted inside me during my conception. Was I half human, half demon? Or some sort of Frankenstein creation that was greater than the sum of my parts?
One thing I was sure of: all that garbage about Sophia being Mother of Wisdom was a crock of shit. Which probably meant the whole Mother of Ahriman thing was likely an inflated title of no value. All that time spent with Payne, with Rooke, chasing Wildeye’s ghostly trail, only to be sent all the way back around the proverbial game board with no real gains: go directly to Jail, do not pass Go, do not collect $200.
Weary and frustrated, I stepped into the bathroom to wash remnants of soap off my hands. When I’d finished, I came out to find the anti-Enola canvas spread over one of the beds. Stretched on top of it was Lon, fast asleep. His shirt sat in a heap on the carpet with his belt, and the top button of his jeans was unbuttoned, but it looked as if that might have been all he could manage before he gave up and passed out. He still had his shoes on.
I watched him for moment. I wasn’t worried; his halo was bright, and his chest rose and fell in a comfortable, steady rhythm. I’d have been content to watch him all night. Mainly because he was alive and okay. But the longer I watched him, the more I found that assessment taking a decidedly nonsaintly detour as my eyes followed the line of golden hair bisecting a very fine chest straight down to the unbuttoned button of his jeans.
Damn.
After tugging off his shoes, I stripped down to my T-shirt and pulled the sheet over both of us. He didn’t even wake up. At least it gave me a chance at a closer peek. Just a little harmless perusal. Or lustful ogle, whatever. My gaze wandered over lean muscle. Really nice arms. Really nice everything. Oh, and there was something I’d seen before: the scar over his ribs where his ex-wife, Yvonne, had stabbed him the day they got divorced. And on his neck, the scar he’d gotten at Halloween from Duke Chora’s blade. I’d never seen so much blood.
Christ. I’d been through a lot with him.
Gingerly, I reached for the scar on his neck and traced it with the tips of my fingers. A thin silver chain stretched above it. Funny. Lon wasn’t one to wear jewelry. Whatever was on the chain had swung to the other side of his neck and was buried in his hair. I arched my arm to retrieve it, careful not to wake him as I slid it to the front of the chain.
A ring.
An engagement ring.
Tiers of rectangular stones surrounded an elongated emerald-cut diamond. A fairly sizable one and damn heavy. The setting was geometric and sleek, very classy and modern. The diamonds alone had to have cost a pretty penny, but it was what lay inside the center stone that made it priceless.
Lon’s halo. Gold-flecked green swirled inside the stone. Demons who could afford it hired a gemplexer, a sort of chemist who could siphon off a bit of halo and trap it inside certain gemstones. It was more than a little expensive and enormously romantic to offer a piece of yourself to someone else.
My throat tightened. Was this Yvonne’s engagement ring? God, if he’d been wearing it all these years, was he holding a torch for her? Or maybe he just kept it because he didn’t want a piece of his halo ending up in a pawn shop. Wanting to believe it was the latter, I slid the ring back where it was, out of my sight. Then I curled up against his side and held on to him as if he were mine.
Late Sunday morning, while Cady and Lon were sleeping in Twentynine Palms, Jupe tried one last code on his dad’s library door. The fingerprint mechanism could be bypassed with a numerical master code, but the system only let you try three wrong codes before locking it down for twenty-four hours. Which was exactly what was happening now—the flashing red lights told him he’d failed again before the keypad shut off.
“Goddammit,” Jupe muttered. “What is the code?”
“Jupiter?”
Crap. The Holidays were already back from church.
“I’m just getting something in the studio,” Jupe called back as he quickly strode down the hallway and popped into his dad’s photography room. He scanned the tables, looking for the “something” he was supposed to be getting as his phone buzzed.
He glanced at the screen. Leticia.
His heart leaped inside his chest. He fumbled with the screen to answer it, nearly dropping the phone in his haste. “Hello,” he said a little too loudly.
“Hey, it’s me,” Leticia’s voice said in his ear.
He nearly melted into the floor. “Hey. What up?”
“You busy?”
“Maybe, I don’t know.” That’s it, nice and smooth. Chicks liked it when you acted reserved. That’s what his friend Jack always said, anyway.
But Leticia didn’t sound all that happy. In fact, she sounded downright pissed. “Look, are you or aren’t you busy? Because I’m about to do you a big favor, but if you don’t have time—”
“I have time, I have time!” he said quickly, then regretted sounding so eager.
She didn’t seem to notice. “My sister is about to drive into La Sirena. Her boyfriend lives there.”