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The thought of Shemhazai makes my head pound harder, and so I shove it aside. I sit on the piano bench, lift the piano lid, and begin to play. The tattoo on my arm is visible, and I try not to see it, remembering the way Willow looked at it. At me. How she seemed to be physically repelled by it as if sensing its dark energy. It was as if she knew what Shemhazai would take from her.
I wear him on my body and I, too, feel that repulsion. It’s not for what he’ll demand of me. I know that well enough, and I’m prepared to pay the price if it will save my sister and keep my remaining brother safe.
It’s what I am expected to do to her that has me battling myself. It’s Grandmother’s stories of the past, of the curse. It’s what I’ve read in The Book of Tithes that chronicles the tragedies my family has suffered over centuries. How those tragedies somehow, as if by divine intervention, abate once The Tithe is paid and the Wildblood witch sacrificed.
It's insane, I know. Yet here I am. Here we all are.
Just to clarify one thing about that divine intervention. It’s not any God in heaven I am talking about. Grandmother believes in one God: Shemhazai. The leader of the fallen angels, or Watchers, who were sent to look after humans and who instead took the women for themselves and created a species of man and beast. Well, beast or God, depending on who you ask.
Nephilim.
The children of fallen angels and human women.
Until, that is, the great flood was sent to wipe out the race—genocide, according to Grandmother. The leaders of the Watchers, Shemhazai among them, and my own namesake, Azrael, were punished for eternity. Well, eternity by our human standards, I suppose.
According to my grandmother, the Delacroix family is descended from this race. To her, it explains our great height, our strength, and our abundance of blessings. Only since Isaiah Delacroix had the misfortune of meeting and falling in love with Elizabeth Wildblood did things go so wrong for our family.
Well, falling in love is how she explains it. His lecherous advances being rejected is probably more likely the case if he’s anything like the dream version. However you say it, though, generation after generation, both Wildblood and Delacroix have paid a heavy price.
But I digress.
I close my eyes and focus on the music, an ancient requiem that banishes the migraine and envelops me in its darkness. In a darkness that is somehow a comfort because it brings with it oblivion, at least for as long as it lasts.
My mother, Amélie, taught me how to play. She had an incredible talent for the piano, and I inherited about an ounce of it. Actually, she could pick up any musical instrument and play beautifully, but the piano was her beloved. I still remember the look in my father’s eyes when he would watch her as she created the loveliest music. I am so grateful to have this piece of her left for me, a single thing Grandmother can’t take away.
I lose myself in the notes, pounding on the very same keys my mother pounded on. I play until the tips of my fingers are numb, until the light filtering in through the dark, heavy drapes covering every window turns a deep orange marking the setting of the sun. I have passed a full day here, which is not an unusual thing. Time seems to move more quickly when I play.
And I am very aware of time. Of days. Nearly three-hundred-sixty-five of them. Just a few more days until the anniversary that I will need to mark. A full year since Abacus’s death.
Rest in peace, brother.
Between his death and The Tithing, it’s no wonder my head feels like it’s going to explode.
I stop abruptly, hitting the final note that becomes a haunted echo in this haunted house. Willow was right about that. I sit here for a long time, my hands resting on the smooth wood of the piano lid. I look at the ring on my left hand. My wedding band. And I know it’s idiotic. but in some way, I feel a quickening inside myself. Something new.
Maybe it’s simply that, the fact that it’s new. She’s new. Maybe it’s that she’s so full of color and life, so much so that energy has no choice but to manifest as that vibrant red hair, those clear blue eyes that sometimes look like shards of glass—at least when they’re looking at me. But that thing, that quickening, it is hope. Hope even in the face of everything.
Or hell, maybe it’s a thing as simple as attraction. The woman makes me want. I take my fill of women as I need to, never denying myself, but it is just that: sating a need.
