He was sitting on the floor of the tunnel, stripped to the waist, while Greta examined his back. Once she’d cleaned away the blood, there was only a minor reddish bruise marking where the knife had gone in: no sign of scarring, no intimation that the skin had ever been broken at all. She ran her fingers over it: almost no swelling. And the ever-present rustle in his breathing seemed to have stopped. When she put her ear to his back to listen, he sounded clearer than she had ever heard him.
“I mean,” he went on, wiggling a disconsolate finger through the hole torn in the back of the jacket, “they could have been more considerate.” His shirt was also beyond repair, but apparently he minded less about that.
“What, would you have rather they let you take your jacket off before they stabbed you?” Greta asked, sitting back on her heels. She was still furious, but the clinical fascination with what had just happened was currently eclipsing the need to shout at him. “‘One moment please, Mr. Violent Lunatic, I don’t want to get blood on my nice suit’?”
“Well, yes,” he said, as if this were an obvious and rational statement. “I can be repaired, but good tailoring is very difficult to find.”
“Repaired,” she said. “Why didn’t you tell me you could … what, come back to life? That … person … said you summoned him.”
“Mm,” said Fastitocalon, wincing. “I really am sorry. I thought you knew. I didn’t realize you’d be so worried.”
“You thought I knew? How the hell would I have known?”
“I assumed Wilfert had told you,” he said. “And I don’t remember summoning anybody, but the sparrow thing is apparently actually true. Sam must have sensed I was in trouble and decided to come and lend a hand.”
“The sparrow thing,” Greta repeated, and just stopped herself in time from tucking her hair behind her ears; her hands were still sticky with Fastitocalon’s blood. Her father had known about this? And hadn’t bothered to tell her?
“Mm,” he said again. “He knows where all his demons are, all the time. I think he feels ever so slightly guilty about the whole business with Asmodeus, when I was first exiled; every now and then he tries to get me to come back to Hell permanently.”
“And you don’t want to go?” Greta asked.
“It’s not a question of wanting,” he said, bleakly. There was a little color in his face, but to Greta he still looked unwell. “I’m not the same thing as I used to be. It’s not home anymore; I don’t fit there, much as I miss it. I don’t fit here, either, but I’ve been here so long it’s difficult to imagine being anywhere else.”
Greta looked at him—grey, shirtless, disheveled, covered in blood, his perfectly combed hair a tangled mess—and her tears brimmed over. He stifled a curse and reached for her, and Greta let him steady her with a thin hand on her shoulder. She closed her eyes for a long moment, fighting for calm, for control.
When she could trust her voice, she said, “We have to get you out of here. And the others. Ruthven and Varney looked terrible. I need to see to them, and we all have to get the hell out of this goddamn tunnel before anybody else shows up. I—Oh fuck.”
“What?” said Fastitocalon, letting her go. “What is it?”
“Ruthven’s house,” she said. “They set it on fire. The monks. I just hope Kree-akh and the others got out safe, but, Fass, he left me in charge of it and it burned to the fucking ground. He’s going to be devastated.”
“You don’t know that,” he said, but he had gone noticeably paler. “It might be destroyed; it might just be damaged, there’s no way to know until we get up there and see. Don’t go borrowing trouble. But I agree that we ought to vacate the current premises; if you’ll help me up I think I can probably manage independent ambulation.”
Greta nodded and pushed herself to her feet, offering him her hands. She had to take quite a lot of his weight, but once he was upright he seemed relatively stable. Still, she was very glad to see Fastitocalon’s improbable boss leading the others around the corner. She had no idea what he’d done with that whole light-show business, but it had worked, and if Fass happened to experience a sudden relapse she wanted Samael nearby, freaky eyes and all.
She turned her attention to the rest of them, and winced. Ruthven looked dreadful, worse than she’d ever seen him. His face was bright scarlet, puffy, blistered all over, his big silver eyes red and glittering with tears. She thought of the rectifier, of how much UV it must have been putting out, and how much damage it would do to someone with his level of severe sensitivity: That was a clear case of sun poisoning if she had ever seen one. He was leaning on Varney, who also looked bad, but significantly less so.
Before she could say anything, Samael had crossed the chamber to them and was looking critically at Fastitocalon, the point of light still bobbing along a few feet above his shoulder. At close range the gold and white gorgeousness was really kind of overwhelming, especially since he seemed to be glowing faintly. Greta narrowed her eyes, unwilling to let go of Fass despite being loomed at. She had a horrible feeling that he might simply vanish.
Samael took Fastitocalon’s chin in his hand, tilted his face slightly, peering into his eyes. Whatever he saw seemed to satisfy him and he gave a little nod. “You’ll do,” he said. “I’m taking you home; I want Faust to look at you properly, and you’re going to spend at least a week at the Spa doing absolutely nothing.”
“I’m all right,” Fastitocalon protested.
“You will be. Come along and don’t argue. I am not even slightly in the mood.”
“But—” he said, and then his shoulders slumped. “If you insist.”
“You’re taking him to get proper medical attention?” she asked Samael, looking up at the brilliant blue eyes with some difficulty. They narrowed for a moment, and she had the strong and unpleasant conviction that he could read every single thought in her head. It felt a little bit like being thralled without the pleasant pink fog or the cool mirrors; this was not in the least gentle, a glaring searchlight inside her skull.
Then it cut off, and the Devil smiled a little. “I am,” he said. “Dr. Faust is my personal physician, as well as being medical director of the Erebus Health System. Is that good enough for you, Greta Helena Magdalena Helsing?”
“Greta,” said Fastitocalon in a warning tone.
She held Samael’s gaze for a moment longer, and then nodded. “Yes, of course. I would love to have the opportunity to speak with Dr. Faust at some point, if that would be at all possible.”
“I expect that can be arranged,” said Samael. “And now we really must be going. Fass?”
Fastitocalon gave her a look Greta couldn’t read clearly—there was apology in there, and affection, and not a little worry—and then just sighed and closed his eyes. Samael put an arm around him, pulled him close, and made a small sharp gesture with his other hand. There was a brilliant flash and then a small thunderclap as the air collapsed in on itself, and Samael, Fastitocalon, and the captive ball of light were gone.
“Didn’t he have nice manners,” said Ruthven into the subsequent silence, sounding slightly hysterical, and fainted dead away.
CHAPTER 16