Page 26 of What Is Dark Within Me

Nicolas wore a dark, form-fitting jacket. It had a high collar embroidered with a thread of such a deep red it was almost imperceptible until the lantern light shifted, revealing an embroidered pattern of intertwined snakes. He was seated in the furthest chair at a round table, his chin propped on one hand, while the other traced the woodgrain.

“You have a Botticelli,” she squawked, wincing at the sound of her voice. “The painting of Persephone. It’s a Botticelli, but I’ve never seen it in any of the catalogs.”

“And you won’t find it there. I had it commissioned.”

Nicolas looked up in time to see Aleja roll her eyes; something which earned her a smirk that was gone before it could annoy her. It was easier to ask about the painting than to ask if she was ever going home. She understood the reasons he had saved her—at least the second time. But just because he didn’t want her dead wouldn’t make it any less convenient for him to keep her trapped here until his hellhounds found Violet or he figured out how to break the binding some other way.

“You made a deal with Botticelli?” she asked. The idea made her throat tighten. It was one thing to know her great-great-grandfather’s brilliance had been fueled by his bargain with the Knowing One, another to realize some of humanity’s greatest works of art had been a product of Otherlander mischief.

“No. My bargains are few and far between. Botticelli was a friend.”

“You are so full of shit,” she said. Aleja was past fearing Nicolas. There was only anger left.

“He told me the same thing a few times himself, but we have other pressing matters. Laurent’s flight into the forest wasn’t random. He was trying to snatch this from its hiding spot,” Nicolas said.

He deposited a backpack on the table, pushing it toward her. It was obnoxiously purple, even when covered with dirt. There was a fading patch on the front for Paranoid Hour, a punk band so obscure that Aleja never would have heard of it if not for Violet.

“Where did you find this?” she said, dragging the backpack toward her so forcefully that one of the seams nearly ripped. It wasn’t Violet’s hiking backpack, but the one she wore for trips around town. She always liked to travel with multiple snack options and an obscenely large water bottle.

“A small cave near where you and Laurent went off the cliff. He must have taken it from Agnes Flanders’s home. Exorcists can glean a lot of information from personal objects; it’s possible Violet left it with her. It was stashed with this.”

Nicolas slid something else across the table. It was a glass pendant gilded with gold at either end that encased a few small bones. Perhaps it was meant to be worn as a necklace, for a small loop was at the top where a chain could be strung.

“What is it?” she asked. Aleja had glimpsed similar objects at her family’s estate, but the secret rooms were only accessible to adults. She’d been seventeen when she decided her family was worth disowning and fled as far as she was able to without a passport.

“An Unholy Relic. It’s the finger bones of what we call an Astraelis. I’m surprised the Diabolus Society had it in their possession. If they’d bothered to publicize it, I might have paid them attention much sooner.”

“An Astraelis?” she asked. Aleja was almost certain that when he met her eyes, she saw grief in them.

“Another type of Otherlander, but they no longer identify as such. There was a war, once. The Astraelis fought against us in the Hiding Place. Those who slew an enemy on the battlefield often took their bones as tokens, like this.”

Nicolas trailed off, and Aleja reminded herself not to feel sorry for him. He might mourn his fallen friends, but he’d never apologized for killing three members of her family.

“It’s difficult to kill an Otherlander,” she said, knotting her hands together in her lap to smother the heat building in them.

“Yes. Extremely difficult, even for a practiced magician. I doubt it was the work of the Diabolus Society, and besides, the war ended centuries ago. Someone among them must have stolen it. Probably Violet, considering it was in her backpack.”

“What do you mean, stole it? Agnes Flanders had a nice house. Hell, Violet made good money from her brand deals. She wasn’t a thief. Maybe she bought it.”

“Unlikely. No, impossible. What you hold is one of the most powerful objects in your world. Let the being inside of it out, and it makes Garm’s true form look like a puppy. I don’t believe any magician who knew what they had would have parted with it willingly.”

She threw her hands up, disturbing the little plush panda dangling from one of the backpack’s zippers. “Fine! She stole it. Fromwho? You need to find her as much as I do, sohelp me.”

A flash of red flew from her palms. Aleja didn’t notice her eyes had filled with tears until she heard her voice break. She’d cried plenty of times since Violet’s disappearance, but that had been when the story was simple: her friend had gone hiking by herself and never returned.

Pull yourself together. Don’t show weakness in front of an Otherlander, said the voice But there were more chips on Nicolas’s side of the table than hers, and now she was trapped in an unfamiliar realm, being told her friend had probably stolen what were apparently the finger bones of an angel.

“I’m trying,” Nicolas said. “This complicates things. This was almost certainly in the possession of an Otherlander—one who wouldn’t give up their prize to a human unless they were in league with each other. Tell me what happened to Violet. Slowly, in detail, and from the beginning.”

Aleja tried, as frustrated tears burned their way down her cheeks. She hadn’t meant to let the Knowing One see her cry, but it felt as if all her bones were broken from the fall. Even her heart didn’t seem to work properly, beating in spurts, with long periods of silence in-between. She told him about Violet’s blogs, about the day Violet had plopped down next to Aleja at lunch and asked if she was a witch with a straight face. About Violet’s bad habit of going into the woods alone; how she would have been the perfect final girl in a horror movie, all brave and bubbly and beautiful. About all the forums and podcasts documenting her disappearance that Aleja couldn’t have avoided if she wanted to.

And Aleja confessed that, in Miami, she had never quite been taught how to live. She’d expected to die every day until her grandmother was taken, and once it was clear Aleja was not the last sacrifice, there was suddenly the matter of afuture. Violet had been the one to show Aleja how to apply for student loans, how to order a drink at a bar, and how to not fall apart when she got a bad grade. The sister Aleja had never had, and the only reason she’d managed not to flunk out of school and lose her apartment.

“In the footage you found in Agnes Flanders’s home, Violet said she was sick,” Nicolas said.

“Yeah. Violet survived lymphoma when she was in her early teens. She’d been in remission for years. I don’t understand why she wouldn’t tell me if it had come back.”

“Hellhounds, Dark Saints, and a Satanic social club. I’m guessing you wouldn’t have approved.”

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