Indigo(86)

What made that knowledge even worse was her awareness that the demon inside her knew it, too. If she was packaging to the Children of Phonos, then to Damastes she was simply a prison from which he wished to escape. All that concerned him was that he achieve his freedom, instead of simply swapping one prison for another.

The more her own thoughts swamped her, the more the debate among her companions over tactics, over how best to make their final stand against the Children of Phonos, seemed to recede from her. Nora lowered her head, closed her eyes, and let the voices of Selene and the others become an echoing blur. All at once she felt an overwhelming need for something good to cling to. Something to reassure her that life wasn’t all violence and pain and self-centered viciousness.

She needed to know that somewhere in the world was a place she could find love and comfort if she needed it; that somewhere was someone who cared about her. The harsh fact was that she had only ever had two real friends in her life—and one of those had turned out to be imaginary.

That still left one, though. One whose importance she had underestimated until now. Switching effortlessly back into Indigo (and trying not to think about what that might mean), she opened her eyes a crack and sought out the nearest shadow.

It was not difficult. They were everywhere here, and eager to serve. Before the Androktasiai had time to realize what she was doing, she slipped into the nearest and began to move effortlessly along the shadowpaths.

She felt like a bird riding the thermals. Her choices were so instinctive it was as if her route had been preordained, as if some inexorable force at her destination were dragging her toward it, reeling her in. There was a sense of timelessness. Her journey felt both leisurely and instantaneous.

Then she flowed into corporeality once again, her physical senses rising to the fore, the weight of blood and bone and muscle settling into place inside her envelope of skin. She was Indigo, and then she was Nora. Although it was dark, she knew instantly where she was.

She was in the bathroom adjoining Sam’s room in the hospital. She paused a moment in the dark, leaning forward to listen for any sounds on the other side of the door. Hearing nothing, she wrapped her hand around the cold metal of the handle and slowly turned it. She pulled the door open a crack, wincing as it creaked, and peered out through the gap, ready to become Indigo again in an instant, to flee back into the shadows if need be.

Sam’s room was in semidarkness, the blinds drawn. The sound of deep, slow, even breathing told her he was asleep.

She pulled the door a little wider and stepped forward. Now she could see him lying in bed, the gloom giving his unruly dark hair and the white pillow that framed it a murky, soft-focus fuzz.

She stepped closer still, and as she peered at his familiar face, relaxed now in sleep, she felt her jagged edges softening, a sense of calmness fold around her like a soft blanket, or a hug. Sam was not exactly handsome, but he wasn’t ugly either. He had what might be called a homely face, but one made attractive by the laugh lines around his eyes and mouth, by the gentleness in his almond-shaped eyes—when they were open, that was.

Right now his closed eyelids looked soft as moth wings in the dimness—so soft she had to fight an urge to lean forward and kiss them. As she took another step forward, disturbing the air, he stirred, as though detecting her presence.

Or maybe, she thought, he was subconsciously detecting the presence of the demon inside her. Perhaps it disturbed his peace like an ominous shadow glimpsed beneath the glassy, unbroken surface of a calm sea. Although Damastes was quiet inside her, she could still feel him there. She sensed that he was aware of her confusion and fear, and that he was taking pleasure in it.

She made a conscious effort to block him and was reassured to find that, even in her weakened state, she still could. With the lid on the box firmly closed, she allowed herself to think more freely about her agreement to create a murder golem for Damastes’s use. Giving him any amount of autonomy was a huge risk, but with Selene and her sisters talking about turning themselves into suicide bombers, Nora didn’t see she had any other choice. She needed to rescue the Edwards children—whatever their parents were, they themselves were innocents in all of this—and one way or another, she needed to stop Rafe.

It was imperative, though, that she not allow Damastes complete autonomy. Somehow she had to find a way to keep the murder god on some sort of mental leash. The last thing she wanted was to set Damastes free on an unsuspecting world. She would willingly die before she allowed that to happen.

Pushing these thoughts aside, she relieved her pressure on the lid of the box once again and sensed Damastes pushing back out into the light, clearly irritated that she still had the strength to shut him down.

Shielding secrets from me, are you? she heard him growl in her mind.

She kept her reply light, casual. Not at all. You were disturbing my friend’s sleep, making him restless.

She almost imagined him snorting huffily. That wasn’t my doing, girl.

Nora didn’t grace him with an answer and sensed him sinking back into a torpid resentment. In the bed, as though something of her internal exchange with the demon had seeped once again into his dreams, Sam groaned and became restless, his head turning from left to right on the pillow. Though his eyes were still closed, his lips parted with a wet pop. His voice was thick, slurred. “Hello?”

Nora froze. Ridiculously she felt like a child on the verge of being caught out doing something naughty. The natural thing would be to go to the bed, stroke Sam’s hair, soothe him with a few gentle words.