Black Heart

10

THERE WAS A CHARRED RUIN WHERE MY HOUSE USED to be. I walked forward slowly, as if in a dream, my hand on my belly. Under my fingers my child wiggled and stretched.

The two-flat that I had lived in since I was a child was nothing but a few blackened bits of rubble. The house had been so thoroughly destroyed that not even the foundation remained. There was a pit where my home used to be. The grass in the front and back was completely burned away, exposing the dirt beneath. Even the shed was gone. Every last shred, every physical remnant of my life, had been destroyed.

I had a moment where I was grateful that Beezle was no longer living in the house. He would have been inside when this . . . this . . . whatever it was had happened. But Nathaniel could have been inside, and my heart clenched in fear. Nathaniel. Where was he?

“What happened here?” I asked, and my voice sounded lonely in the night. “And how long were we gone?”

Daharan and I were the only two souls out on the street. The lamplights burned, and so did the lights inside other houses. Everything seemed like it had gone back to normal in Chicago. I could hear the sound of a sitcom on television drifting from the open window of my neighbor’s house. Farther down the block I could see traffic on Addison zipping back and forth. Somebody’s dog barked. It was like the vampires had never come, like everyone had returned to their normal lives and forgotten.

But my house was gone. It was gone. It was stupid, really, to cry over it. I was still alive, right? My baby was safe. And almost everyone I cared about had left the building long before this had happened. Samiel, Beezle, J.B., Chloe—none of them would have been here. I wasn’t certain about Nathaniel. I didn’t want to think about it. I didn’t want to think about losing someone else to death unless I was sure.

But my pictures of my mother, the blanket that Beezle slept in, my favorite sweaters and the brush that Gabriel had used on my hair on our wedding night . . . All those things were gone. The books I’d read as a child, Gabriel’s clothes hanging in the closet, any tangible proof that I had lived, that I had memories. It was all gone.

It seemed like too much on top of everything else. My home had always been my safe haven, the place where I could find refuge when everything else was falling apart. Now there was nowhere for me to go. I was breaking to pieces inside. Soon there would be nothing left of me.

I realized that this was what my enemies wanted. They wanted to break me, to make me helpless. Just the thought of it hardened me. I was not helpless. I would not break. My eyes were dry. I would find out who did this and they would pay.

“What happened here?” I asked Daharan again.

“I was with you, Madeline. I do not know,” he said. “But I can use a spell to discover the answer.”

“Then do it,” I said, and my voice was cold.

Daharan gave me a mildly reproving look, but said nothing. He raised his hands up. I went to stand beside him.

What happened next was a lot like watching a film in reverse. I saw everything that had happened on this spot from the moment we emerged from the portal backward. At first, there wasn’t much happening. People walked by; dogs peed on the remains of my lawn. Kids dared one another to climb down into the pit where my house used to be.

The leaves on the trees seemed to shrink down to buds, and then disappear altogether. Samiel and Chloe stood before the charred bits of the building. Beezle sat on Samiel’s shoulder. They were speaking, but I couldn’t hear what they said.

Then they were gone, and J.B. was there on the sidewalk with his hands in his pockets, tears running down his face.

And then I saw the house, surrounded by darkness and fury and covered in flame. The Retrievers were scorching the earth in their rage. They would make sure that I had no home to return to.

Because I was watching time run in reverse, it seemed that Nathaniel stumbled toward the Retrievers, then knelt on the sidewalk on his hands and knees, coughing up smoke. Nathaniel staggered back into the burning building.

I knew now that he’d escaped, and I was grateful. And I knew that the Agency had caused this. I had given most of my life to them, to a job that I’d hated and never asked for. When I had broken their laws through no fault of my own, they had sent the Retrievers to take me. When the Retrievers couldn’t find me, they’d destroyed everything they could in my stead. I’d had enough.

“You don’t need to show me any more,” I said.

Daharan dropped his hands, and the vision of the house burning, surrounded by furious Retrievers, disappeared.

“What will you do now, Madeline?” he asked.

Part of me wanted to go downtown to the Agency and burn the whole thing to the ground. The other part of me recognized that this was a dark-side thought, and that my argument was not with the Agency but with a select few members of it. So I reined in my impulse to destroy things.

The world was getting more dangerous by the minute, especially for me and for my child. Emotion wasn’t enough to carry me through anymore. I had to think, to use my brain.

It was a lot harder to think when my home was gone. I’d always perceived that I was safe there. Supernatural creatures could not cross a threshold without an invitation, and that was powerful magic.

Without a threshold I was vulnerable to more than Retrievers. I could get a hotel room, but the threshold just wasn’t as strong. So many people moving in and out of the same space didn’t create the same sense of home. And if I was in a hotel, you could bet that some freaky thing would come looking for me there, and that would mean that ordinary people would wind up as collateral damage. I had no idea where Nathaniel was staying. I didn’t think that Chloe and Samiel would let me bunk with them, since Samiel had moved out of my place because it was unsafe. There was nowhere for me to go, unless . . .

I looked sharply at Daharan. “Do you think Lucifer knew this would happen? He can see the future, right?”

“He can see aspects of it, yes,” Daharan said. “So can we all.”

“So he knew—you all knew—that I would wind up homeless?” I asked.

“I did not know this,” Daharan said. “Your future is a gray thing to me, despite the familial bond that I feel with you. But soothsaying is not my best skill in any case. That is what Alerian excels at.”

“Alerian knew for sure,” I said, thinking hard. “Possibly Puck. And almost definitely Lucifer.”

“What are you thinking, Madeline?” Daharan asked.

“I’m thinking that it would suit Lucifer very well if I had nowhere to go and no safe place to be, and therefore was forced to come knocking at his door, seeking shelter,” I said.

“Well, what do you know? She can use her brain every once in a while,” said a familiar voice behind me.

I turned slowly, disbelievingly. Beezle was there, a few feet away, flapping his wings so that he was eye level with me in midair. It hurt to see him, to remember the way he’d left when I’d needed him.

“What are you doing here?” I asked, and my voice was hard and cold.

I expected a smart remark, some typical Beezle offhandedness. Instead his face was grave as he said, “I’ve been checking back here off and on, looking for you. Everyone thought you were dead. But I knew you’d be here, sooner or later.”

“J.B. would know that I wasn’t dead,” I said, fighting the emotion that had surged with Beezle’s sudden appearance. He was the first creature I wanted to see, but the very last one that I’d expected. “He would have seen the order for my soul to be collected if I was.”

“Sokolov did show him an order, one that said Bryson collected your soul after you fought the Retrievers and lost,” Beezle said.

“But you didn’t believe it,” I said.

“Pfft. I’d never believe you were dead if I didn’t see the body myself,” Beezle said. “Are you my girl or not? I made you too stubborn to die.”

“Am I your girl?” I asked, very quietly, afraid of the answer.

“You know you are,” Beezle said.

He flew to me then, put his little arms around my neck, and the tears were back. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry I left you. If you ever tell anyone I said this, I will deny it to my stone-turning.”

I laughed then, and patted his back, and kissed his head in between his horns. “I missed you.”

He pulled away, wiping his eyes. “Yeah, yeah. Enough with the waterworks. The Retrievers are going to be back for you as soon as Sokolov realizes you’ve returned.”

“I will take care of the Retrievers,” Daharan said.

Beezle flew up to my shoulder. It was comforting to feel his weight there again. He stared at Daharan for a long time, then said, “So, another of Lucifer’s brothers, eh? What do you want from Maddy?”

Daharan spread his hands. “Nothing. I have come only to assist my niece in her struggles, which are primarily the fault of Lucifer.”

“Just trying to clear the family name?” Beezle asked skeptically.

Daharan nodded. “I can arrange for the Agency to call off the Retrievers.”

“And how will you do that?” I asked. “The Agency is pretty convinced that they are a law unto themselves. Puck and Lucifer have both indicated to me that even they don’t mess with the soul collectors. And the Agency likes to take a hands-off approach with the other supernatural courts. I learned that from J.B. Basically, the Agency’s got a you-don’t-bother-us-and-we-won’t-bother-you attitude.”

“Except where you’re concerned,” Beezle said.

“Yeah, I don’t know what makes me so special,” I said.

“You’re special because you have managed to piss off an incredibly diverse collection of powerful beings,” Beezle said.

“Through no fault of my own,” I said.

“Fault doesn’t come into it,” Beezle said. “The fact remains that you attract attention, and a lot of it. And the Agency doesn’t like that.”

“I do not like it, either,” Daharan said. “I will be having words with my brother on the subject.”

“Oh, to be a fly on the wall when that conversation happens,” Beezle whispered.

“And won’t it attract more attention if you go storming in to the Agency and ask them to leave me alone?” I said to Daharan.

“I will not ask,” he said.

Daharan smiled, and for the first time I realized why his brothers were afraid of him. He exuded a tangible sense of menace, of power, that would not yield to any persuasion. He was the strongest of them all, and the most implacable. His magic was born in fire, and fire was the most pitiless force in the universe. Fire did not discriminate. It could not create. It could only destroy.

I looked into his eyes and I knew that if Sokolov and the Agency did not give him what he wanted, they would burn.

Beezle knew it, too. “Are we okay with this?” he asked in a way that let me know he was not okay with this.

“Don’t harm the Agents,” I said. “They’re just foot soldiers. But Sokolov, and Bryson . . .”

“You can feel free to grind them into little pieces if you like,” Beezle said. “Even I don’t see any point in trying to redeem the two of them.”

“I will find you again, Madeline,” Daharan said.

Then he took to the air. I watched him go until the night covered him and I could see him no longer.

“So,” Beezle said. “Do you think the manager at Dunkin’ Donuts would let us sleep in the back room if we paid her enough?”

“We are not living anywhere you would have twenty-four-hour access to doughnuts,” I said. “You’re heavy enough as it is. What’s Samiel been feeding you?”

Beezle shrugged. “Whatever Chloe eats, mostly. She’s an eating machine. You wouldn’t think that a person that little could eat so much, but she can give me a run for my money. I’ve never seen anyone eat so many tacos in one sitting.”

“So you’ve been gorging yourself while I was half-starved on a distant planet?” I said. “Nice. Very nice.”

Beezle flew off my shoulder so he could look critically at my figure. “It doesn’t look like you haven’t been eating.”

“That’s the baby, you idiot,” I said.

He grinned. “I know, I know. Actually, you do look kind of thin—other than the basketball hanging off the front of you, that is.”

I rubbed the new roundness in my tummy. “It’s not basketball-sized yet. It’s more like softball-sized.”

“That’s not a slow-pitch ball,” Beezle said. “That’s a Chicago sixteen-incher.”

“Enough about my belly,” I said. “Don’t you want to hear what I’ve been up to?”

“Only if you feed me first,” Beezle said. “I haven’t eaten in at least a half an hour.”

“I don’t think these pants came with a platinum card,” I said, digging into my pockets. To my great surprise, I found a twenty-dollar bill in one of them.

“Neat-o,” Beezle said. “Do you think it will do that every time?”

“Probably not,” I said. “I can get you a slice of pizza.”

“One slice?” Beezle whined. “You have twenty whole dollars. You can do better than one slice.”

“That’s my offer. Take it or leave it,” I said.

“Oh, fine,” Beezle grumbled. “But it better be deepdish.”

“Let’s walk to Art of Pizza,” I said.

“Walk?” Beezle said dubiously.

“You’re going to be carried no matter what, so I don’t know why you’re complaining already.”

“No, it’s not that,” Beezle said. “Well, of course I will be carried regardless. But I meant that you would be pretty conspicuous walking around with those wings. People are very curious around here about creatures that look different. Some of them are kind of on edge. So you might want to veil those things.”

“I keep forgetting. I’m still not used to having them,” I admitted as I dropped a veil over my wings. I started down the street, Beezle nestling more comfortably into my shoulder. “Wait a second. If people are still on edge, what are you doing flying around in public?”

“Oh, nobody thinks I’m a threat,” Beezle said with a touch of smugness. “In fact, most children and adults find me adorable, and they’re thrilled to know that cute little fantasy animals actually exist.”

“Cute little fantasy animals,” I repeated. “So they haven’t actually taken the time to get to know you, then.”

“A lot has changed here,” Beezle said soberly.

“How long was I gone?” I asked.

“Three and a half months,” Beezle said.

“So it’s May,” I said. “What happened after I got rid of the vampires?”

“Oh, the National Guard came in, and the Army. They made a big fuss on TV about scouring the streets for remaining vampires. Politicians got on the news and made pretty typical left-and-right pronouncements depending on their persuasion. Emergency funding was sent to the city, which was immediately squandered in backroom deals. In the end, Chicago was declared vermin-free and the government took the credit for making the streets safe again.”

I snorted. “Well, I can’t say that I’m surprised.”

“I’m surprised that they thought they could get away with it,” Beezle said. “Most of the world has seen the video of you turning into a supernova and making the vampires go boom. Nobody could believe the mayor when he got up in front of the press and thanked everyone but you.”

“He doesn’t know who I am,” I said uneasily. “Why would he thank me?”

“Oh, he knows,” Beezle said with relish. “I told you before you left that people would ferret out who you were. It took about three and a half seconds for your identity to be posted all over the Internet. You’re a total folk hero, like Robin Hood.”

“You told me that people would be terrified of me, that they would show up at my house with torches and pitchforks,” I said. “That was why Chloe and Samiel and you left.”

“No,” Beezle said. “They left because they were worried about torches and pitchforks. I left because I was afraid you were becoming a monster.”

“And that fear has just magically gone away?” I said.

“No,” Beezle said. “But I think I should stay and make sure you don’t transform completely from Jekyll to Hyde.”

“You’re going to be my Jiminy Cricket?” I asked.

“Do you want me to start singing ‘Give a Little Whistle’?” Beezle asked.

“Absolutely not. I’ve heard you sing and it’s not an experience I’d like to repeat. Ever. Again.”

There were a few people out walking on Lincoln as we headed south toward the six-way intersection at Ashland and Belmont. Most of them barely noticed me, although one middle-aged guy walking a perfectly groomed poodle did give Beezle a double take.

“What are people saying about the existence of vampires?” I asked Beezle. “Have other creatures revealed themselves, too?”

“Besides me, you mean?”

“I don’t think your coming out is that significant in the grand scheme of things,” I said. “What about the wolves? The fae? The fallen?”

“Jude, Nathaniel, Samiel and you were all on television fighting the vampires in Daley Plaza, remember?”

“Of course,” I said. That had been before I’d gotten my new wings, before Nathaniel’s legacy as Puck’s son was revealed, before I’d traveled through a portal to another world. But I would never be able to forget the sight of vampires streaming from the subway tunnels and out of manhole covers, infecting the city like a cancer.

“So because the four of you were on TV looking very supernatural, people kind of knew that there were other creatures out there besides vampires. There’s been a lot of chatter on Facebook about what myths could actually exist.”

“How do you have time to fool around on Facebook with your eating schedule?” I asked.

“I know how to eat and type,” Beezle said. “Anyway, overall the response has been more positive than you’d expect. There’s a lot of curiosity.”

“Curiosity can be just as dangerous as anger or fear,” I said, thinking of the doctor at Northwestern who had seen Nathaniel’s wings and coveted.

That guy had wanted to take Nathaniel away to a lab and perform experiments on him. He couldn’t be the only one who would want to take an angel or a vampire apart and see what made him tick. I shuddered. I was glad Beezle had made me cover my wings. I didn’t want to end up on an operating table with my insides on the outside just because some scientist wanted a Nobel Prize.

Beezle continued. “Anyway, who’d have thunk that a generation of people prepared by supernatural TV shows and movies would be so completely receptive to the existence of actual vampires and werewolves and so on?”

“Yeah, who’d have thunk?” I said dryly. “So has any group formally introduced themselves?”

“Not yet,” he said. “Wade is considering it. They are holding back because of Therion.”

“He’s dead,” I said. “I don’t think his opinion should come into play.”

“It’s not his opinion they’re worried about,” Beezle said. “It’s the way he went on TV and announced he was taking over everything, and lots of people were eaten up before and after his presentation.”

“Wade is so harmless. He looks completely ordinary,” I said. “All he has to do is go on the air with his beautiful wife and adorable child and say that he’s going to live and let live. Everyone will love him.”

“It’s his beautiful wife and adorable child that concern him,” Beezle said. “He doesn’t want to see his family harmed if the gamble fails.”

“I thought most people were accepting,” I said.

“They are,” Beezle said. “They’re accepting of the idea that there might be interesting creatures among them. But that doesn’t necessarily translate to welcoming an entire population of something that could potentially kill them.”

“Humans do a very fine job of killing one another when magic is not involved,” I said.

“They don’t usually slaughter each other in the streets and then eat each other’s faces off,” Beezle said. “So while there is human curiosity, there is also trepidation. A lot of supernatural creatures think it’s best to ease into things.”

“Introduce themselves to a small group, hope that the response is positive?” I said.

“Pretty much,” Beezle said. “There are anecdotal tales of wolves and fae coming out to their workplaces or their sports teams, things like that.”

“And?” I asked.

“Most responses have been positive,” Beezle said.

“Most?”

“There are bigots everywhere,” Beezle said sadly. “And they like to kill what they don’t understand.”

“So you think I should continue to hide my wings,” I said.

“For now,” Beezle said.

I stopped on the sidewalk next to the Art of Pizza’s plaza. There was a rock music school next door, and a tiny parking lot. The restaurant was bright and bustling. Large glass windows fronted the building. I could see people picking up take-out orders, others gathered in groups in the informal seating area. Delivery drivers rushed in and out.

“Beezle,” I said. “If I’m a folk hero, won’t people recognize me?”

“Nah,” Beezle said. “You had really short hair in the first picture that Therion showed on the vampire broadcast.”

“People are going to be fooled by the length of my hair?” I asked.

“You were also covered in blood,” Beezle pointed out. “And you were wearing that stupid coat.”

“That stupid coat keeps me warm,” I said. “Or it did. It got burned up, along with the rest of my stuff. What about the video of me destroying the vampires? I had long hair then, and no blood on me.”

“But you have wings in that video,” Beezle said. “And they are covered up now. So people might think they recognize you, but they won’t be sure. It will be like an Angelina Jolie sighting.”

“I don’t think it will be anything like an Angelina Jolie sighting,” I muttered, but I crossed the parking lot and entered the restaurant anyway. I couldn’t hide out from the world, and anyway I had nowhere to hide.

I’d thought I’d just slide up to the counter, order a couple of slices to go and get out, like a regular person. But I’d forgotten that I had Beezle on my shoulder. All it took was one person noticing my gargoyle. A murmur rose in the restaurant as men and women pointed at him. My cheeks reddened as I stepped up to the counter.

“One thin-crust mushroom and a sausage deep-dish to go,” I said to the short Latino guy working behind the counter.

I have to give the guy credit. He didn’t even blink. Or maybe he was just so focused on getting through the order and to the next person that the presence of Beezle on my shoulder didn’t really register.

It took only about a minute for him to get my slices and ring up the order, but it felt like an eternity. I could feel the stares of the curious burning into my back. Beezle seemed unaffected by the whole thing, adopting the attitude of a celebrity who knows he’s been identified but wants to pretend otherwise.

I collected my change and the container holding the pizza and headed for the door. I pretended I had tunnel vision and focused only on the exit. Almost there. Almost . . .

A young man a few inches taller than me wearing a Muse T-shirt and a pair of worn-out jeans slid in front of me just as I was about to push the door open. His blue eyes were alight with excitement.

“Hey,” he said loudly. “Aren’t you Madeline Black?”