Demon Bound

the head of the dragon, was the smallest of all the demons.
    This time, Jake didn’t go on alert when she smiled. “Obviously not. And you’ll note the Guardians are equal to one another—even Michael. Only the angels are given divine rank.”
    “But no wings. Here, or on any of the other pieces.” Jake scanned the room again as if making certain, then glanced over at her. “In Tunisia, I assumed the female was a goddess figure. Nike or Nemesis, maybe. Until I saw the friezes.”
    Alice nodded. “I believe it’s the same woman who is one of Michael’s companions in the early transformation scenes—but if so, it is also the first time I have seen her winged.”
    Jake returned to the Mycenaean figure. “Yeah. Her sword, her posture, her position. The hair and clothes change a little, but . . .” He trailed off, leaning in before slanting an assessing look at Alice. “Actually, she’s kind of like you.”
    “Pardon me?”
    He nodded to himself. “Yeah. All angular. Her—I know it’s the style. But you, you’re just kind of sharp and bony. And she’s softened by her clothing instead of being all buttoned up and choked by her—” Jake clasped his neck in both hands. He glanced at her, froze. His arms fell back to his sides, and he cleared his throat. “But, uh, you’re American, right? Not Greek.”
    “My father was American.” Alice held out her hand. Her self-control was truly remarkable, she thought. When the five-dollar bill appeared in her palm, she vanished the money without tearing it to pieces. “My mother was Egyptian. Like that panel. ”
    Not so remarkable then; her irritation had slipped through. But he looked almost grateful for her pointed change of subject.
    “What about Michael?”
    She might have looked stiff to Jake before, but she felt stiff now—her braid pulling too hard on her scalp, her arms crossed too tight. “What of him?”
    “What does he say that all of this is?”
    “He says it is ‘something best left buried by history, and forgotten. ’ But he also tells me that I am, of course, free to excavate it.”
    Jake frowned, clearly disappointed. “But—”
    “Michael also cannot see it. Any of it, except for my sketches. He teleported to Abu Simbel with me, and couldn’t see or enter the temple—even when I took his hand and tried to lead him over the threshold.”
    That left Jake speechless. He ran his hand over his head and looked at Alice, then the artifacts, several times.
    Finally he asked, “What about the symbols over the antechamber entrance? Have they shown up before?”
    “No, this is the first time.” Something else that was new. But although she was eager to discover the symbols’ meaning, she did not look forward to taking the steps to learn it. “I will have to ask Michael for the translation—”
    “ ‘We go north,’ ” Jake interrupted. He met her surprise with a quick grin. “I asked Lilith. So, they left directions in this one, but not the others.”
    “Apparently.”
    “Then how’d you find them?”
    “My Gift.” She saw that response wouldn’t satisfy him, and added, “When these temples appear, it disturbs the spiders in the area.” There was no other word for it. “The disturbance spreads quickly, but the farther away it is, the weaker it feels. So I follow it to the strongest point.”
    He studied her for a long time, she thought. Turning it all over in his mind, looking for answers. “And you’ve been finding these since—When did you finish your training?”
    “Nineteen hundred and eighty-eight.”
    “Over twenty years ago? Then why doesn’t anyone know about this?”
    “Anyone? Or you?” Alice watched acknowledgment touch his expression, and continued, “There are some who know. Anyone who has cared to ask me, or who has come across the photographs in the Archives—”
    “These are in the library?” he said mournfully, as if already grieving over the two decades he’d not known of their existence.
    “Perhaps if you’d ventured into the corner I usually inhabit, you’d have come across them.”
    Unexpectedly, he grinned. “Well, now that you don’t freak me out, maybe I will. You’ve been working on them alone all this time?”
    She shook her head. “Only since the Ascension. Before that, I had a team of novices to assist me.”
    “Oh,” he said, and winced. “Yeah. Sorry.”
    If her spine had been rigid before, now it became a steel bar. She’d forgotten about the stories the novices told.