Only Fae ones, I thought. Aloud, I said, “Please, Edward, tell me what happened. Who—or what—attacked you?”
“I would be interested in the answer to that question as well,” Nigellus said, still looking cold enough to flash-freeze lava. There was a brittle edge to his voice that made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.
Edward sighed and gave his face a final scrub before rising on creaky joints and carefully stretching his back. “Yes, all right. Let me change into something more appropriate while I talk, though. I should go speak to your father and try to calm him down, but no one wants to see knobby old-man knees.”
He disappeared into the back room, his voice emerging through the open door. “Your father seemed to have opened up a bit since I first arrived, Miss. He’s forged some emotional connections with a few of the people here, and he was growing more talkative with me, as well. He speaks of you sometimes...”
My throat tightened, but apparently Nigellus was more interested in cutting to the chase than getting a blow-by-blow account of the days leading up to the attack.
“Get to the point, Edward,” he snapped.
“I was, sir,” Edward said patiently. “At any rate, the two of us had just retired for the evening when I was awoken by an unfamiliar presence inside the house. It was dark, but I cast a flame in the hearth to see by, and discovered a demon standing in the main room. Your father was still back here in the sleeping room, Miss, so I spelled the walls and door as best I could and came out to see what the demon wanted.”
“And you didn’t think that spelling yourself might be wise, under the circumstances?” Nigellus asked sourly.
“Yes, sir,” Edward called back, still in that patient tone. “I did, in fact, spell myself as well. Though you saw how effective that ended up being.”
I took a deep breath, trying very hard not to remember exactly how ineffective it had been. “The demon broke through your protection somehow?”
Edward emerged, fully clothed and looking much more himself. “He did indeed. I was able to deflect the first attack to a degree, but after that... well, I daresay there’s no need to delve into the details. Suffice to say, I’m immensely relieved to hear that Mr. Bright suffered no physical injuries after I was... incapacitated.”
That swimming feeling in my head was back—made up of combined relief and shock. “You saved him,” I said, fighting vertigo as I pushed away from the wall that had been holding me up so I could cross the room and wrap my arms around the old man. “You saved my father.”
Edward had that bony, delicate feeling common to the elderly, but he accepted the hug with good grace and patted me gently on the back a few times.
“There, there, Miss. I won’t say ‘no harm done,’ since seeing something like that was the last thing your poor father needed,” he soothed. “But hopefully he’ll perk up a bit when he sees that the results were only temporary.”
I pulled back and wiped my eyes. “You haven’t said which demon it was who attacked you, though. Did you recognize him?”
Edward tugged his shirt, straightening it with fussy movements. “Oh, indeed, Miss. Forgive me—I assumed it was obvious. The demon that attacked me was Myrial.”
TWELVE
THE REVELATION WASN’T all that much of a surprise, but I still felt burning anger churn in my stomach. I turned to Nigellus, leveling a glare at him. The demon looked drained—as well he might after somehow putting a human being back together from a pile of dismembered meat and gore.
“What do you plan on doing about this?” I asked, biting the words off. “Because I don’t care how flexible the laws of Hell may be—this cannot be acceptable.”
It was Edward who answered. “It’s a bit more complicated than it would have been if Myrial had injured your father—heaven forbid. You see, I’m not technically a denizen of Hell.”
I looked between them, momentarily struck dumb.
“You have got to be fucking kidding me,” I managed eventually, aiming the words mostly at Nigellus.
“More complicated, perhaps,” Nigellus said, “but you are right in one regard—it’s definitely not acceptable. A demon-bound individual has some protections, at least.”
Sure... protections from the demons he’s not bound to, maybe, I couldn’t help thinking.
“Perhaps we should go and collect your father now, Zorah,” Edward suggested. “There’s certainly an argument to be made that he was the object of the attack. I was merely in the way. Besides, I don’t like to think of him sitting alone, stewing over what happened.”
With difficulty, I dragged my rampant emotions under control and focused on Edward.
“Are you sure you’re well enough?” I couldn’t help asking, even though he seemed fine now to all appearances.
The butler raised a bushy eyebrow. “Of course, Miss. Dying loses its novelty value after the first dozen times or so.” He leveled a pointed look at Nigellus. “And I’m not the one who just expended massive amounts of life-force to knit these old bones back together for the umpteenth time.”
My eyes slid to Nigellus as well, taking in the faint translucence of his skin in the firelight. “Okay,” I said. “Sharalynn and I took Dad to her hut. She and her boyfriend are with him now—and possibly one or more of the village elders if they’ve arrived yet.”
Edward gave me a wan smile and waved me toward the door. “Lead the way, Miss.”
The curious crowd was still gathered outside, but they shied away from Nigellus’ death glare like a herd of startled deer, opening a path for us. I might have been tempted to try and reassure them that everything was all right, but for one thing, I wasn’t sure if that was the case, and for another, it would be quite a bit easier to explain what had happened to whichever of the elders
