Vicious Grace

that. Being kept by my ex-husband’s ex-girlfriend is too strange.”

“Until you find someplace better, then,” I said with a shrug. “Or you stay at your place, and Aubrey can stay here. Or whatever. Up to you. I’m not using the place. You can stay here or not. Whatever you want.”

“But if you come back here—” Kim said.

“I won’t.”

THE TRICKY thing about innocence is you don’t know you’ve got it until you’ve lost it. You think that you’re worldly and experienced and maybe a little jaded, but you’re not. You find out something about the world or about yourself, and it changes everything. Puts everything up for grabs again.

I had a year as the luckiest girl in the world. From my twenty-third birthday to just after my twenty-fourth, I was the heir to the magic kingdom. Sure, there were monsters in it. Sure, it was dangerous. But it came with a ready-built set of friends and allies, and my wise old uncle before me had left bread crumbs for me to follow, right? I just had to figure out what he’d have wanted me to do, follow directions, and everything would work out right. Looking back on it, the idea seemed frail and naive and I wanted it back. I really wanted it back.

Eric fell from grace with the world, and along with everything else, he’d left me the chance to do the same thing. I could follow his path and become the person he’d been. I’d wanted to, until I saw where the path ended. I felt older. I felt hurt and lessened and more frightened. And more alone. I’d lost my faith in my uncle, and losing faith in God had been easier. If God wasn’t what I’d thought, then He was just a story people told themselves to get through the night. If Eric wasn’t what I thought, then anything was possible.

Eric wasn’t what I thought. Anything was possible.

I’d spent what seemed like a lifetime living the question What would Eric do? That was gone, and all that was left were What am I going to do? and What will it cost me? I left something in the darkness under Grace. Part of my innocence. Part of my soul. Which word I chose didn’t really matter. It was gone, and I would never get it back.

And even that wasn’t my biggest problem.

GOING BACK to London felt strange. It didn’t seem like going home so much as going back to a friend’s place. There wasn’t the sense of exploration, of discovering something new. I’d been in these rooms before, slept in this bed, woken up to the same neighbor with a kink for bhangra music. The weather was gray and cool. The leaves had already changed color. Living with just Ex was strange too. I kept expecting him to be Aubrey or Chogyi Jake. But he drank coffee instead of green tea, and none of his stories were about exotic wasp larvae. It wasn’t unfamiliar, just strangely small.

We were sitting on the couch watching TV. The rain pattered against the back windows. A British police car with its two-tones siren passed by like something out of a BBC murder mystery. I wondered what Helen Mirren was doing these days. And between one breath and the next, I knew I was going to tell him.

“I shouldn’t have won,” I said.

Ex looked over at me. He frowned. He always frowned.

“The fight with the haugsvarmr. I shouldn’t have won.”

“The guilt’s hard. I know that, but—”

“Ex. The circle broke. I didn’t have you three to help me. Even with Aubrey pulling the Oath of the Abyss. I shouldn’t have been able to win.”

“The wards that Eric put on you—”

“You mean the ones we can’t find? The ones we haven’t reinforced in the last year and who knows how long before that? Those wards?”

Ex crossed his arms.

“Those wards,” he said.

“Spells are magic,” I said. “And magic fades. You told me that. Magic fades, and I’m getting stronger.”

“All right,” Ex said.

There should have been a flash of lightning, a crack of thunder. The rain just kept dripping. The TV show went to commercial. I felt Ex’s gaze on me like I was a puzzle he couldn’t quite fathom. I took a deep breath, sighing it out slowly. When I spoke, my voice sounded weirdly calm and matter-of-fact. You know. All things considered.

“I think I have a rider.”