Page 110 of Demon's Bluff
Licking my lips, I stood right under the opening, staring up at the patch of red-tinted darkness high overhead. The sun was going down, and a cool wind blew in, bringing dust with it.
“Adagio!” I shouted, hands cupped.
Nothing.
“Adagio!” I called again, my hands going to my ears when the word bounced around the room, beating on me.Crap on toast…
Frustrated, I slumped against the curved wall and slid down to sit, staring at my dusty boots. The thought to try to contact Bis rose and fell. He hadn’t been at the church at this time, didn’t know me. My melancholy thickened as I recalled his shy smile when he tried anything new, his deadpan seriousness when pranking Jenks, and his utter devotion to me even as he gave me the space I thought I needed. He had trusted me when I said I’d make it home. I missed him, and he was the one whom I fell short with the most. And now he would be alone.
“I’m so sorry, Bis,” I whispered. “I didn’t mean to leave you.” Depressed, I thumped my head against the wall and sniffed back a tear.
A soft scrape pulled my eyes open, and I stared at the ceiling. “Bis?” I whispered, a horrid mix of dismay and delight cramping my gut. He shouldn’t see me. He shouldn’t be here!
But it was a rougher voice, older and cracking like stones, that answered me with a slow, “Why do you pine for my kin?”
I sat up, neck craned. “Adagio?” He had heard me. Relief it wasn’t Bis washed through me, shortly followed by heartache. “I need your help,” I added as I got to my feet and peered up the hole to see nothing. He wasblocking the view of the sky. “I know you have no reason to give it, and probably a few not to.”
A flash of the night showed as he shifted his head—then was gone. “Why do you pine for my kin?” he asked again, and the dry scent of feathers and iron drifted down to remind me of Bis.
“Because one of them looks to me. But he doesn’t know me yet and I don’t dare call for him.”
I shifted as a few pebbles sprinkled down, and then the brighter light of the night returned. “I can’t help you,” he said as he moved away.
“I know.” I whispered it, more for me than him as I sank down, clear of the falling pebbles. “He lives in reality. Just a kid. Size of a big cat. He showed up on my church one day, and he never left. Even when he should. He stuck with me. Lost his life saving mine.”
A soft rumble of confusion echoed in my prison, and his face filled the opening. “And yet you call for him? When he lost his life?”
I lifted a shoulder and let it fall. “Because I held it in trust until he got it back.”
“Mmmm,” he rumbled, the sound almost a force pressing down on me. “You say you are bonded. I know all the demons. I do not know you.”
“I’m new,” I said listlessly, thinking Al was right about my chances of making it to old age. But, man…I thought I’d make it further than this. “Just like Bis,” I added. “Not being there for him is my biggest regret.” I hesitated, wondering if Adagio had talked to Fred, too. “Hey, Adagio? What is it that you regret the most?”
More pebbles sifted down, and his billows-like breathing grew fainter. “I do not regret.”
“Everyone has regrets,” I insisted, and the gargoyle made a huffing rumble.
“I do not,” he insisted. “I have a wish.”
Wishes were cousins to regret, and I fiddled with the pebbles, trying to stack them up. “What do you wish for, Adagio?”
“That I knew how to give peace to the one I care for.”
“Newt?” I smiled ruefully. “Yeah, she’s a churning mess most of the time. It’s hard being confused when everyone else seems to know what they are doing. I have a secret you can tell her. No one knows what they are doing. Some of us simply know how to fake it better.” My pile of pebbles slid into nothing, and I started again.Click, click, click…“I think I saw her at peace only once. You were with her.”
“I must go,” Adagio said, and a slew of pebbles sprinkled in, destroying my new miniature tower. “It’s not safe after dark, even for me.”
“It was The Hunt,” I added, not caring if he left but wanting to talk. “Jointly led by Newt and a Kalamack son, if you can believe it.”
A rumbling chuckle of laughter drifted down. “I do not.”
“Everyone was there, even Dali in those ugly torn robes he wears when he wants to remind everyone of their civic duty to hate elves.” I stared at the black hole in the ceiling. “Bis was too small to carry me, so his dad did. We followed our quarry through both realities, through every ley line until we drove our quarry to ground. I’ve never seen anything like it, and I probably never will again. It was magnificent.”
“This thing you say that hasn’t happened yet,” Adagio prompted, his disbelief obvious.
“It has for me.” My voice went wispy as I usedQuaereto cut the last of the sequins from my shirt and flick them one by one across my cell. “Bis fixed them all. Every single line. And then together they killed the idiot who set the lines’ resonances against each other as easily as he had set the demons against themselves. Demons need each other, like the flower needs the sun. That’s okay. I need my people, too.”
Adagio was silent, but I knew he was up there, and I found I could still smile. My life might have been short, but it had been full. Trent would remain to remember The Hunt. It hadn’t been for nothing.