Page 61 of Graceless

She was quiet a moment. When she spoke again, she had gone back three sentences.

"Your post. Your circuit." Each word picked up weight as it came. "The wind off the water, because the sound carries to my windows. Raq. How long have you been watching me? All night — every night?"

"Yes."

"Since when?"

"Fifth Avenue."

"That's weeks. That's before the crate, that's before the job, that's before you knew my—" She stopped. Before I knew her name. "Why?"

"I couldn't⁠—"

The sentence stopped itself. I have stood before the ones we answered to and given them nothing — not a word, not a flinch, not while they took what they took. Four words at her kitchen table, and I could not finish them.

"You couldn't what?"

"Look away." It came out of me raw, with none of the flatness I keep on everything, because there was none left. "I have watched over things for longer than your city has existed. It was a job. It was always a job. And then a woman stepped off a curb on Fifth Avenue, and since that day I have not been able to look away from her, and I have stopped asking why, because the answer does not come when called."

Her heartbeat filled the kitchen — I could not stop hearing it — and what came off her skin was not fear. I sat very still until staying seated was possible again.

She drank her coffee without looking at it, and went back to the part that mattered.

"You said it was a man. That night. You stood at my chain and told me a man was casing the block and he'd been moved along."

"Yes," I said. "That was a lie." Flat, no cushion. "It was not a man."

"Then what was it?" And when I paused a breath too long: "No. Stop. Whatever you're doing right now — the careful version, the corners coming off in advance — we're done with that. If I'm in danger, Raq, you tell me plain, right now. What was at my gate?"

"I don't have its name to give you. It's a demon, Caterina. An old one, and a wrong one even by their measure — the kind their own kind won't sit near. It watches. This block. My signals, my posts. And you." I put my hands flat on the table. "You are in danger. That's true."

"Watching for what?" She put the cup down before she dropped it. "What does a demon want with a house in Bensonhurst?"

"I don't know." I gave it to her the way she gives a client the condition of a thing they love. Plainly. "That is the truest sentence I own tonight, and it is the one I hate the most. Demons keep their own reasons. I have watched this one for weeks and I have not solved it — only this: it is patient, and patience in that kind is never good news."

"Okay." Her voice was doing something she permitted. "You said what you notice gets noticed. Noticed by whom, Raq? Who else is out there?"

"The ones I answered to, once." The kitchen was very quiet. "They notice everything, eventually. The less I say of them tonight, the safer this kitchen — and I will say more when saying it is survivable. That is not a corner coming off. That is the one door I am asking you to let me hold shut until I can hold it shut properly."

"That's two," she said. "And you're still counting. Who else?"

"My brothers."

The kitchen went silent enough to hear the floor above us creak.

"Your — you have brothers."

"Two hundred of us came down. What's left of us is scattered. We don't gather; gathering draws eyes. And not every fallen thing on this earth is of the two hundred. Some of my brothers came down later. Different road. Same landing. One of them guts fish on a boat out of Sheepshead Bay, and that is the entire glamour of the fallen life."

"And the ones who didn't fall," I went on. "Still winged. Still employed. The graced, if you want the official word — grace being the thing they kept and we spent. One of them checks on me. He has for a long while. He calls it inspection, and he pretends it's duty, and I pretend to believe him." I looked at the window a moment. "He is the only one of them who still comes. He is not a danger to you. He watches me, not you. Of everything on the list, he's the one item you can cross off."

"Does he know about me? Your brother?"

"Yes."

The yes sat on the table being enormous.

"And what did he say?"