Page 101 of A City of Smoke and Demons
‘I don’t know.’ It was the truth, he didn’t know. He’d never been in love and wasn’t sure what it was supposed to feel like. Was it all sweaty palms and yearning? Waiting for the first moment each day when he’d see her? Or was it more than that? Was it the humbling gratitude that crept through him, knowing that she cared for him in return? They hadn’t talked about his past, and what it meant, for him, for them, and whatever this was between them. Ezra wasn’t sure he could, but if she asked, he would.
He snorted at the irony of it all. There was a death witch asleep in his lap, and she’d saved him from the Devil. If someonetold him this was where he’d end up, he’d have laughed. He traced the curve of her cheek with the tip of his finger.
The Devil may have put her in his head, but Ezra had chosen to keep her there.
‘If Blackwood wants to talk to her, he can come back later.’
Lira nodded, lighting a candle for them before she left.
It was dark when Analise finally woke. She didn’t speak for a while, trailing her fingers along the length of his thigh, until she exhaled heavily.
‘That was the most terrifying thing I’ve ever done in my life. I can hardly believe it worked. There was a moment, a horrible, horrible moment, where I thought you were gone and I’d failed you.’
Ezra smiled. ‘I knew you’d bring me back.’
Analise rolled onto her back. ‘You had more faith in me than I did.’
He said nothing, fingers moving over her hair, as if they had a will of their own and needed to touch her. She didn’t tell him to stop.
‘Ez, why did you leave the Unseen?’ There was no scorn in her voice this time, no anger or accusation, but his fingers paused. It felt like this was the last part of himself he was yet to reveal to her, or the most important, maybe.
‘They’d started to haunt me, the women I’d sent to their deaths. I could see their faces whenever I closed my eyes. I avoided sleep as much as possible, so I wouldn’t have to see them. It was like they were waiting for me each night.’
Analise sat up, facing him. Her hair was a tangled mess, but her face was soft. ‘Go on.’
‘In the beginning, I didn’t question what I could do, where my talent came from, or even why I was different to the others. I did my job.’ He took a deep breath, and when he spoke, his voice was rough. ‘There was a woman I found one evening andI realised I knew her. She used to visit my mother when I was a child. I wanted her to get away, for my dead mother’s sake, but the Unseen don’t work alone. There was nothing I could do for her.’
Ezra closed his eyes against the flash of memory—Agnes, her face pressed against the cobblestones. Her eyes as she met his horrified ones when she was hauled to her feet. ‘Her name was Agnes Sutton, and after that, I couldn’t do it anymore. I left, but not before trying to help … I tried to warn them, when I could, but I was caught. As you can imagine, the Gendarme weren’t thrilled.’
‘I wondered. Everyone did. There were rumours flying around the Credges. The general consensus was that you were dead, but no one knew how.’ She leant over and dropped a kiss on his mouth then settled down, her head in his lap again.
It wasn’t the whole truth, but Ezra wasn’t sure he was ready to share his true connection to a death witch, not yet.
‘You are the first witch I tracked since Agnes,’ he said. ‘I wasn’t going to do it, and I didn’t, really. I found you by accident. A Familiar—your Familiar, I think—chased me into that alley, to the morgue, and there you were.’
‘I should thank him, I suppose. There are parts of you worth liking, Ezra Ives.’
‘Oh? Which parts?’
‘All of you.’
The meeting was postponed for a day, no more. When Father Blackwood swept into the meeting room, his expression was excited—euphoric, even—but when he called Ezra a miracle, Ezra laughed. Blackwood’s gaze kept returning to him while Jem gave a report on demon sightings, successful missions, and theFamiliars they were keeping watch on across the city. There was a hunger in Blackwood’s eyes that Ezra found unsettling. He wasn’t sure what he was supposed to say, or do. Did the good Father want him to turn cartwheels? Stand on his head?
Blackwood cut Jem off with a wave of his hand. ‘This is simply astonishing,’ he said, his smile broad as he looked between Analise and Ezra. ‘A miracle.’
There was that word again. Ezra resisted the urge to roll his eyes. Blackwood asked about the demon mark.
‘Want me to strip, Father?’ Ezra undid his top button.
‘It’s gone,’ Lira affirmed. ‘I saw it vanish myself.’
Father Blackwood nodded and then asked Analise to describe everything, each moment of Ezra’s death and resurrection. Her voice remained firm as she recounted what had happened.
Ezra listened, feeling oddly separated from Analise’s story, like it wasn’t him she was speaking about.
‘You know what this means?’ Blackwood asked. ‘We can free others from their bargains.’
Ezra’s focus snapped back to the conversation. ‘And who do you propose is going to do all the saving?’ he demanded, his voice angrier than he intended. ‘If you haven’t failed to notice, we have one death witch, and she’s—’
