“As ever, you are a murderer,” Khan cut back.
“Shadowman!” It was a new voice, Talia’s.
Khan bent his head in the direction of his daughter, who was pushing a stroller across the grass, the babes within bundled for a morning walk. Her arrival was so convenient, it smacked of prearrangement.
“This is not your concern, Talia,” Khan said.
“The hell it isn’t. I lost her, too.” His daughter’s face was pale, eyes sad. She’d heard everything: the gate; the devil; Layla’s life, now at its end.
“This morning wraiths were falling from the trees,” Shadowman said, “and you expect me to leave her here?”
“Is it safe for my children?”
Nowhere was safe for those children.
Talia’s gaze grew hot. “Besides, I’d like a little time with her myself. And if this gate business is as hellish as I’ve been told, then you need to destroy it. It’s your responsibility.”
So indeed her presence here this morning was not a coincidence. It was part of The Order’s design for his compliance. Clever.
“Please don’t let Layla’s life become connected to such a legacy of pain and fear,” she said.
“Her life is already at its end, and you ask me to give her up again?”
“Not give her up. Never that.” Talia stepped forward. “We’ll keep her safe for you. The devil is mortal, so Segue security has a good chance of keeping it out.”
By nature, the fae did not age, but Khan felt himself grow old. “A wight nearly had her just moments ago, and they are not mortal.”
Ballard’s interest sharpened. “A draug? Are the wraiths so far along then?”
“Yes, yet another reason why I am needed here.”
Talia put her body in front of her children. Her eyes went dark as she, too, drew from Twilight for strength. Between clenched teeth, she asked, “What’s a wight or a draug?”
“Wight and draug are the same, old in the history of the world,” Ballard said. “It is a night creature, a wraith starved into an insubstantial corporeal form, so the Earth’s gravity does not hold it. They are hungry to feed, but lacking all human mores and intelligence.”
“They cannot be caged either,” Khan said. “Adam needs to begin digging barrows, or graves. Wights can only be trapped in the earth, as if they are buried.”
“You are safe enough during the day.” Ballard looked away from Talia, dismissing her.
“And I’ll be here at night,” Khan finished.
Ballard shook his head. “Not good enough. Every second the gate remains on Earth, mortality is in grave danger.”
“Mortality depends on Segue, too,” Custo said. “Shadowman’s solution makes sense.”
“Do not think to speak for me, boy,” Khan said.
Ballard inclined his head to Custo. “You forfeited your voice in this matter when you gave Shadowman the hammer.”
“I like it, too,” Talia interrupted, nodding, her breath coming hard with her relief. “Khan with you during the day, here at night.”
“The irony,” Ballard said to Khan, “is that you should be about your duty in Twilight, ushering the dead. No. I will not haggle the terms of your cooperation. You will come, now, and see to the gate, or we will see to the gate ourselves.”
Khan smiled, the plain of Shadow going utterly still. “You misunderstand me. Death does not haggle. Does not bargain. Does not bow. Harm Layla, and the devils and wights will be the least of your concerns.”
Silence reigned over the parley.
Then Ballard’s face flushed red to match his anger, but his expression was stone. “For the good of man, I concede.”
“Women, too, I hope,” Talia murmured.
Khan glanced over at the rising sun, yellow bright. The wraiths were gone; Layla was safe for the moment. Time was short. “I’m ready now.”
Layla was about to take a seat in the jeep when soldier-man Kev jerked her back.
“Black widow,” he said and swatted a big, black, and venomous spider. Once, twice, three times before it curled up its extralong legs and died.
Her time to die? Forget that. But Layla’s heart was thumping. The forest bramble gave way to bumpy grass, which climbed to a single-lane access road. Kev took the road at a good clip, and when he broke into the valley, she spotted the castle of Segue.
The sunlight was behind her now, the sky pale blue, yet the building was only partially illuminated. The Escher effect again. Inky darkness crawled up the west wing so that not even the windows reflected the morning. The other part of the building looked solid, lightening with the rising sun.
The sight tugged at her mind, as it had that day when she’d come to snap a photo of Talia Thorne. Something was off about the building. Something wrong, dangerous. It made her feel as if she were small and exposed while a massive, violent storm hung on the horizon, but on a horizon line that Layla did not understand.
This was exactly what she’d been talking about with Talia.