Page 90 of Graceless

I walked back over the bridge at human speed, and the harbor ran gray and patient under me, and I made myself say it in order, because order is what I have instead of prayer.

The demons are not the threat. The demons are the audience.

The watcher on the tower wants to watch. Wanting to watch is not wanting to stop.

Cam came at night, off the record, to warn me instead of reporting me — and there was fear in his face, and I had never once seen fear there before.

And above all of it, the only party with a reason — a standing order that needs no signature, and a promise that does not say never, only never again by water.

I had spent a season guarding her doors against the dark. But nothing in the dark wants her. Everything that watches her block watches it because I am on it. The danger was never going to come up her street some night.

The danger came up her street months ago, in the rain, and she opened the door, and fed it eggs.

The danger is me. It has been me the whole time.

She was at the stove when I came in, and her whole face lit.

That is the fact I will keep from that kitchen: I came through the door with the worst knowledge of my exile in me, and a woman at a stove turned around and lit up like a window.

She crossed the kitchen with the spoon still in her hand and kissed me hello — garlic on her hands, tomatoes and red wine on her mouth, sauce going on the stove behind her — and I held her one beat longer than hello holds.

"How was the cargo?"

"Fine."

"Liar." She said it into my collar, easy, and then she leaned back in my arms and looked at me, and the easy went out of her face by degrees. "You've got the face again. You've had it since the beach."

She stepped back. Spoon lowered. Eyes level.

"Raq. Am I in danger?"

I gave her my best smile — the old one, the unfair one, the one made for exactly this work — and I let the calm run off me toward her, slow and deep, like heat off a stone, and I took her back by the waist with both hands.

"Absolutely not," I said.

Every word true. Every word aimed. She is in no danger — the moment I am gone.

I kissed her before she could read the build, and she came up on her toes into it, and laughed against my mouth, and called me a menace, and went back to the sauce, and the kitchen went on being the kitchen — steam, garlic, her voice moving through the small news of the day — while I set the table.

Over her shoulder, on the refrigerator, the pad hung under the St. Anthony magnet where it has hung since the night we shook hands. Her handwriting. The first rule, pressed hard enough to read from across a room.

No disappearing.

On Sunday there would be lamb, and bread from 86th, and a twelve-year-old in her permanent seat, asking questions I answer straight.

By Sunday I would be gone.

CHAPTER 25

CATE

Saturday morning he stood at the stove with the spatula, and I sat at the table with my coffee, and he said, "What do you want from the day?"

"Nothing."

He turned around. "Nothing."

"A whole day of nothing. Laundry. The studio. You in that chair." I pointed my fork at him. "Maybe a movie where things explode and nobody we like dies. Can you sit through a movie? Actually sit? No corners, no windows, no reading the room?"