Page 2 of Each Their Own Devil (Our Lady of Fire #3)

“That was smart of you. As payment, I want you to do this: take a bus to another city and buy a burner phone with cash. Open a new account with a fake email address, for only as long as it takes you to find a woman in Oregon, in the United States, named Paola Ruiz. She’s the owner of the Gentle Hearts Agency—they take care of old folks who have no one else. Send a private message to Paola saying exactly this: ‘Al is safe with distant family in Europe. She doesn’t want to be contacted, but she loves you.’ Then delete the account and never reopen it. Do you understand?”

Both the marriage bond and Josephine bristled. “I’m sorry, but I don’t…”

“Do it, or I leave, and you never see me again,” Aleja said, her voice soft and low. Okay, so maybe this felt good. Maybe this felt right, even though it was a stupid thing to contact Paola. Even though she still had no idea what she would do to Josephine’s ex-boyfriend, no matter how much he deserved punishment.

“It was just a strange request, that’s all,” Josephine said quickly. “I thought you would ask me to slaughter a goat or something.”

“It’s a pain getting their blood out of my clothes. Where can I find your ex?”

Josephine’s shoulders sagged. “It’s Friday, so he’ll be at L’Escapade . It’s a whiskey bar at the edge of town. Be careful. It’s where all of Marc’s drug dealer buddies hang out.”

“Be careful? I’m a Dark Saint.”

“I know, but you seem kind of…insecure. Is that why the Knowing One is with you?” Josephine paused and bit her bottom lip in thought. “I don’t want to be a killer, no matter how much Marc deserves it.”

“If I kill him, you won’t be.”

“If there is any other way…”

“I’ll figure it out,” Aleja breathed. “Thanks.”

She paused for a moment, realizing that she had no idea how to take that long step back to the Hiding Place—or anywhere else, for that matter—until Nicolas gripped her arm, and the shadows enveloped them. The last thing Aleja sensed was a whiff of Nag Champa incense clinging to her dark red hair. When the wave of nausea passed, Aleja was not back in the army camp, but on a busy street in front of a glittering neon sign, where half the letters were out and the others too bright to look at, obscuring the name of a French movie. A black taxicab whooshed past them, and her hair fluttered in the breeze.

She had spent so long away from the human world that Aleja had no idea what day of the week it was, but it must have been a summer night. A woman in a sundress looked them up and down before taking a slow sip from her glass. A group of men in loose t-shirts laughed at a video on a phone shared between them. Across the street, a sandwich board with gray letters on a black background read L’Escapade. It was a nondescript storefront with dark windows, as if the bar couldn’t be bothered to be found.

“Was that as awkward as it felt?” Aleja said, suppressing a cringe.

“My professional opinion? You were vicious—it was a delight. But it was foolish to try to contact your cousin, dove. As far as she knows, you’re dead, and it’s better that way. You agreed to that before your Trials. Why let her hope?”

Aleja did cringe then, and the feeling was not tinged with embarrassment but grief. “She thinks so many of our family are dead.”

“So did you, and you survived. Come on. First, we talk, then we deal with Marc.”

In the chaos of the evening, she had nearly forgotten about the Unholy Relic containing a memory from her previous life, moments before Nicolas had rescued her from execution. As she thought of it, her pinkie finger ached, like she could still feel the sting of the amputation. She followed Nicolas wordlessly into an alley between L’Escapade and a kebab stand that smelled of cumin and black pepper. Aleja swallowed; Bonnie’s cooking was delicious, but it had been ages since she’d eaten greasy street food from a paper tray.

This was her first time being surrounded by people when she was no longer human herself. It was like watching the world through a piece of lightly frosted glass that would undoubtedly become increasingly opaque as time went on. As they ducked into an alley, the sound of a Friday night downtown faded beneath the heavy thump of a bassline from one of the apartments overhead.

“You watched the memory?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“What do you think?”

Nicolas paused for a long moment. “We can’t trust the Messenger.”

“That conversation took place centuries ago, Nic. That Aleja wanted me to see it.”

The corner of Nicolas’s mouth twitched at the mention of Aleja’s former life, but his face recovered quickly. “The memories in Unholy Relics can’t be faked, but it’s the Messenger I doubt, not you. If this apocalypse were real, don’t you think the Second would have told us?”

“Val says?—”

“Val is the Messenger’s son. He gave her the information she needed to capture the Third on our territory. There is a reason he’s a prisoner of war.”

“If they’re telling the truth, then we’re all dead. The Messenger could have killed me more than once, but she didn’t. Whatever she is planning, she thinks she needs me.” Aleja pulled the chunk of bone that Violet had given her from her pocket but hesitated. She hadn’t intended to hide the bone from Nicolas, but it still felt like sharing a secret she’d sworn to keep. “Violet also believes the Messenger. This is the bone of an Authority—she has the other one, and she claims she’ll send me memories through them.”

“Tell me exactly what the Messenger told you,” Nicolas whispered. Though his voice was intense, his eyes had gone distant, as if he was looking past Aleja into the light of a flickering streetlamp above a news kiosk, where graffiti screamed 666 across the shuttered door.

“I told her I’d help her kill the First if she helped me do the same to the Second, using Val’s research to keep the rest of us safe. She knows what he has done to us. I think she’s convinced herself that I want revenge on him.” Aleja wasn’t entirely sure that she didn’t want revenge, but those thoughts were too dangerous to release, like letting an enormous predatory bird free while you were trapped with it in a locked room.

Even in the strobe-like effect of the streetlamp, she saw Nicolas’s cheek dimple as if he were biting the inside of it. “That was good,” he eventually said.

“I’m not that great at thinking on the spot, okay, and—wait. Good ?”

“She’ll know that information is dangerous to you if it gets out to the other Dark Saints. She won’t expect anyone to be helping you. If you can convince her to drop her guard, that’ll give you a chance to take her heart and fulfill your bargain with the Second.”

“So, you believe her after all?”

“I don’t understand it. All those centuries ago, we had time to talk before you snuck off to—before you left to see the Second. You would have told me if you wanted to.”

“It was a difficult time,” Aleja said, because it was the only thing she could say with certainty. It felt strange to speak for her former self when she had no real idea why that memory was the one she had chosen to share.

Nicolas’s gaze flickered to her eyes and then away. At least that, she could interpret. He had admitted he didn’t know what had been going through her mind when she snuck away to accept a punishment meant for him. A part of him might still believe she had seen it as an opportunity to escape the Hiding Place—and him—once and for all.

“You gave the relic to Bonnie, not to me,” Nicolas said. His voice had taken on the familiar bored flatness he always used when keeping emotions in check.

“Bonnie is the oldest of the Dark Saints, and she was loyal to the Hiding Place. It was a logical decision. And—” Aleja swallowed, acutely aware that she was voicing the thoughts of someone who didn’t truly exist anymore. “What would you have done if you’d seen that memory back then? Would you have raided the Astraelis realm to get answers from the Messenger? Maybe that Aleja was just trying to protect you, as you had always protected her.”

She couldn’t immediately tell if the words had been kind or cruel from the way Nicolas’s eyes burned. He squeezed their entwined fingers so hard it hurt, and the sting drew her closer—she would take any sensation from him. Pain meant they were both still alive. She rose to her toes, slamming her mouth against his; Nicolas was quick to react, but she had enough time to nip hard at his lower lip.

“I can’t pretend to know exactly why she did what she did,” Aleja said, pulling back by less than an inch. Nicolas’s breath was hot against her. “But I do know it was because she loved you.”

Nicolas drew her closer. His mouth forced hers open, but not before one of his canines grazed her upper lip in revenge. “We’ll see, Wrath,” he muttered into the kiss. He snatched one of her hands and dragged it to his chest, as if she could feel the snake tattoo writhing beneath his shirt—a reminder of how his love for her had almost destroyed him.

“If my old self wanted me to see this, she had her reasons,” she whispered. “We need to figure it out.”

“What we need…” Nicolas said, chasing after her mouth as she pulled away. He managed to plant another fierce kiss on her closed lips. “…is a librarian. I’ve already called them to the palace. I’ll go to the Second’s cave tomorrow. When it comes to the Messenger, nothing is ever straightforward. We need to learn more before we act. Use the bone to contact Violet. Get what you can out of her.”

“Nic, what do we do if they’re right? What if it turns out the First has to die, or we all do?”

Nicolas rubbed the bridge of his nose. His face was no longer gaunt, but his hair was wild, the silver streak cutting through black like a crack in obsidian. “Then we do what we can to help. The other Dark Saints are not going to like it, Aleja. If we allow the Messenger to get close, and she kills the Second without any of Val’s protections in place, I don’t need to tell you that?—”

“You don’t,” she said. The Hiding Place and its Dark Saints would be wiped out. All the witches of the world, blessed by the Second’s magic and knowledge, would die. She had already pictured her cousin Paola’s face enough tonight. “I’ll talk to Violet. What do we tell the Saints? They’re going to be eager to try to get the Third back.”

“We’ll think about it. For now, let’s see how you want to deal with Marc.”

Aleja took a step back. She had nearly forgotten they were standing in a dark alley that smelled of fried food because she had answered her first call as a Dark Saint. Her boot met a puddle, and the flickering light reflecting in the water turned the ground kaleidoscopic.

“He sounds like a piece of shit, but I don’t want to kill him.”

“Whatever you do, if he or his friends suspect Josephine has a hand in it, they’ll go after her again. We need to take care of the entire crew. As a Dark Saint, your fire can be used in more ways than you know. Draw some up around your hands and see if you can make it take a shape, like I do with the Umbramares . We’re still under my glamours for now. No one will pay attention to us.”

She had lived for so long with someone else’s voice in her head that it was the first avenue Aleja tried. The absence of it still felt like a phantom pressure—something that wasn’t supposed to be there but still lingered, heavy and undeniable. Are you there? she asked softly.

Nothing answered. Or, at least, not in the way she was used to. Instead there came a sensation of questioning. At her fingertips, the fire coalesced, but she could predict the way it moved across her skin—as if she was telling it what to do before she had the idea herself. Two uneven wings rose in licks of dark red, then separated from the core of flame altogether. They flapped out of time with one another before sinking back into the pool of fire around her hands.

“Do you think Marc and his buddies are going to be scared off by a malformed baby bird?” she asked.

“I, personally, was terrified,” Nic said.

“Maybe I can…” Aleja began. She thought of Garm and how she had once felt pinned beneath his enormous claws—a kind of wild fear she had never known before. “If I can make something, how long will my fire linger in the human realm without me?”

“You’re a Dark Saint now. If you command your flames to stay, they will—until a bargain is fulfilled or you dismiss them.”

“Okay. I’m not about to get the hang of this standing around thinking about how much I want to order pomme frites from that stand over there. I need your shadows to help me.”

“Oh?”

“We’re going to chase them out of town like you suggested,” she said. And perhaps it was the old Lady of Wrath and Fire speaking through her without needing words, but Aleja added, “And we won’t stop there. They’re going to understand what it feels like to know there is always a monster just a few steps behind you.”

Aleja had never seduced someone—unless you counted Nicolas. But now she sat in a French whiskey bar called L’Escapade, still wearing her dirty boots from the Hiding Place, with her leather armor glamoured to look something acceptably close to a black t-shirt and jeans, thanks to the Knowing One. The magic hum against her skin was the only reason she knew he was still somewhere in the bar, cloaked in darkness.

As it turned out, it was not difficult to catch the eye of a drunk man half an hour before closing time. Marc had already spilled most of a drink on her lap, and it was only by the unholy grace of the Second that she didn’t grab his arm and let flames sink into his skin right then and there.

“Where are you from again?” Marc hiccupped.

Aleja had never said. For that matter, she didn’t speak French, but the words sounded strange and tinny in her ear. Marc went through several slurred sentences before Aleja understood the gist.

“I’m from Florence,” she decided.

“Ah, I love Italian girls.” Marc barely managed to get the words out before dropping a hand on her knee, and the marriage bond bristled. She grinned and leaned away from the touch but didn’t remove his hand. There was something about the wave of possessiveness in the magic tethering her to the Knowing One that made heat rise inside her. Of all the night’s outcomes, she hadn’t expected to unlock a new turn-on.

“Want to have something a little stronger than this drink?” she whispered. She’d heard that line on one of the reenactments that graced her higher-budget true crime podcasts, but Marc didn’t need to know.

“You have something in mind, sweetheart?”

“I don’t have anything on me, but I bet you’re the sort of man who knows his way around the city. Can you get us a little something? I have cash.” Aleja forced her eyelids open wider. Wasn’t this supposed to be the “doe-eyed” look? A glance at the mirror behind the bar revealed she had accidentally transformed her expression into something closer to a rabid animal. Fortunately, Marc was drunk enough to fall for the attempt.

“My boys are hanging around. What do you want?” he said.

“Oh. The…usual? Listen, my brother is somewhere in this bar, and if he sees me buying drugs, he’s going to drag me back to Italy so that our mother can beat me with a shoe. I’ll head out back. You and your boys meet me there, and then we can go to my hotel room to party.”

“Your brother won’t follow us?” Marc asked.

“No. Once I leave his sight, he’ll forget I exist. He lacks object permanence,” Aleja said, silently congratulating herself for coming up with a ruse good enough to fool a man who was—by her estimate—six whiskeys deep.

“Subject eminence?”

“That’s the one. You and your boys meet me out back, okay?” she said, letting her voice drop.

“Okay, pretty girl,” Marc said, leaning forward to kiss her cheek and missing. As he stumbled out of his stool, Aleja downed the rest of the beer she had ordered, then searched the bar. A door marked “EMPLEES NLY”—she supposed this was her new Dark Saint brain doing its best to translate written text—briefly opened as the bartender returned from his smoke break.

More shadows joined her as she slipped away. Under other circumstances, it would have been difficult to tell in the otherwise murky space of the bar, but she could feel which were Nic’s. They sounded like him, if she cleared her mind and listened to their wordless murmur. There was a hint of approval mixed with annoyance, as if even the shadows were agitated by the sight of another person touching their wife.

Jealous? she asked out of habit, as if she were speaking to her inner voice.

That’s too weak a word for it. If you weren’t planning something worse, I’d take his hands.

The response was so unexpected that Aleja nearly dropped the half-empty glass she carried with her. I didn’t know I could hear you like this , she told Nic tentatively.

It’s new , came the response, a tremble in the shadows, just like the light flickering on the streets outside. But marriage bonds are full of surprises, and we’re technically bound twice over.

Aleja wished she had waited for a swell in the thumping music before opening the back door because the creak of its hinges sounded like a cat in heat. Half the bar turned to stare at her over the rims of their tulip glasses.

“It’s okay!” she called, as the door closed behind her with a heavy thud.

She had not expected Marc and his buddies to be out here already.

There was a part of her whose spine seized with fear. The human in Aleja remembered that Marc had been drunk. That all he had seen of her was a foreign girl with a distracted brother who would forget about her the minute she was out of sight. A girl who he knew had cash and no way to call for help, because the wild bassline from inside would cancel out even the most high-pitched of screams.

Unlike Marc, his companions did not sway on their feet. There were two: one man with closely cropped hair, like his skull was dusted by rose gold, with a thin scar across his right cheek. The other was very pale with dark hair and a gaunt, vampiric face. Both watched her with glittering narrow eyes.

But there was another part of Aleja now. The part who had killed a Dark Saint. The part who had undergone three Trials where she had been forced to confront the worst parts of herself. The part that had become the Lady of Wrath in a time of war and made a bargain that she would rip out the Messenger’s heart with her own hands.

That part was not afraid. That part was angry.

“Hey. Are these your friends?” she said, slurring her words.

“They are. They heard you wanted to party and decided to join us,” Marc said. In the red glow of the exit sign, he took a step forward, one hand shoved into his pocket.

“I changed my mind. I need to get back to my brother. He’ll be looking for me,” Aleja said. “Just let me bum a cigarette first, would you?”

She said the words before realizing why. Aleja wanted to give Marc one last chance to walk away. Maybe not a chance to redeem himself after what he had done to Josephine, but a chance to show that he didn’t deserve the fate she had cooked up for him.

“Look at the little lamb,” said the man who resembled Dracula. “You were right, Marc. She seems delicious. Don’t be boring. Let’s go have a night to remember.”

Shadows vibrated against her skin in anticipation.

“I already told you, I don’t want to,” she said.

The man with the reddish-blonde hair moved first, flanking her to the left. As if they’d practiced this exact move before, Marc darted right, closing the distance between them so quickly that he could have grabbed her before she managed to open the heavy door again.

“Damn,” she breathed.

“Don’t worry, lamb,” Dracula said. “We’ll make sure you have fun.”

“I wasn’t disappointed for me. I was disappointed for you . There is something I didn’t want to have to show you,” she said. Her palms warmed with fire, but in the red glow of the exit sign, it was impossible for anyone to tell but her.

“It’s okay, baby. You can show us anything,” Marc said. This time, he reached for her wrist, snatching it before Aleja’s hand moved away. At the heat, he hissed and pulled back. A moment passed before the smell of smoke filled the air, another until it was followed by that of burning flesh, and one more until Marc roared with pain as the sensation finally awakened his nerves.

The other two men exchanged wide-eyed glances before their attention snapped to Marc, who was cradling his hand against his chest. Already, a stream of yellow pus seeped out from between his index and middle fingers.

“What the fuck was that?” he hissed.

Nicolas’s shadows trembled against her with barely suppressed rage. If she didn’t end this, the Knowing One might do it for her.

“You really should have listened to me. I was trying to save your lives. I wanted to warn you: you didn’t corner a lamb. You cornered a wolf,” she said.

That line was cool, right? I think that line was pretty cool , she said.

Not bad for a first-timer , Nic’s shadows whispered back.

The man with the rose-gold hair barked, “She burned him! She’s a damn witch.”

No. Aleja was one of those beings even the bravest witches warned against contacting. She allowed the flames to engulf her entirely, the heat licking at her skin without harm. In the faint reflection of a puddle, she caught a glimpse of herself, her armor stripped of its glamours by the fire.

The men managed a few frantic steps before the shadows merged with her flames, shifting their colors to flickering shades of blue and violet. As the dark fire left her hands, it expanded—grew—taking shape until it resembled three of Garm in his monstrous form. Hulking beasts, as if they had clawed their way up from the pits of the earth where survival depended on smoke and sulfur.

With a single nod from Aleja, the three beasts pounced, each striking their target with unerring precision. If the men tried to scream, their lungs were too choked with smoke to produce more than rasping gasps.

“Where were you going? I thought we were going to have fun,” Aleja said with a pout.

Marc twisted beneath the creature’s grasp, but the motion only served to scorch another section of his skin as it clamped an enormous paw down on his shoulder.

“What are you— Someone, help!” he managed through a smoke-filled throat.

“I am the Dark Saint of Wrath, and you’ve made an enemy of me, Marc,” Aleja said, crouching beside him. She did not think she was enjoying this. These were bad men, but perhaps they hadn’t always been. They’d been young once—little boys who probably liked to dig up earthworms, ride their bicycles, and dream about how much ice cream they would buy themselves when they grew up.

“Don’t kill me,” Marc whimpered as the beast readjusted its grip. The other two men had gone silent aside from a deep gurgling sound from the boy with the rose-gold hair and the crackle of the beasts, snapping and popping like bonfires.

“You should be grateful. This is my first day on the job, and I haven’t decided what kind of Dark Saint I’m going to be yet,” she told him. “So these creatures are only going to chase you. They’re not that fast—you were just unprepared. But that doesn’t mean they’ll ever give up. You’re going to need to run, Marc, and keep on running, because if you ever turn around, if you ever think about returning to this place, you’ll understand that I’m not doing you a kindness by letting you live.”

“Please. Let me up,” he whispered.

“Since you asked so nicely,” Aleja said, pushing herself to her feet. She took one last look at the creatures born of her magic combined with Nicolas’s. They were as large as Great Danes, with chests that bowed out, pulsing with an internal rhythm of red and gold light, as though their hearts were forged from fire.

“Let them get up,” she commanded the creatures. “Give them a fifteen-minute head start before the game begins. When they sleep, you stop chasing them, but for no more than six hours at a time. If they turn around and try to come back here, then they’ve broken the rules, and you are free to do as you wish with them.”

One of the creatures brayed—a horrible scratching noise like claws raking the inside of its throat. It stepped back, allowing Marc to stagger to his feet. The other two followed, releasing the vampiric man and the boy with rose-gold hair. Blood streamed from their noses, bubbling against their lips as they struggled to take ragged breaths.

“Ready, set, go,” she whispered.

The men ran.