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Palamedes died once.
It was a bad hunt that began with bad information, and ended with Palamedes, a slash through his throat and two more through his stomach, scrawling a complex spiderweb of runes on his arms with his own lifeblood, detonating himself as a mortal sacrifice to power a banishment and a renewal that went into effect as he died.
The demon that they were fighting went down, and so did every ghost and wraith and spirit in a thirty mile radius. Palamedes never did anything by halves.
Camilla was untouched. Even the overwhelming taste of sulfur, which made her soul want to gag while something else rode her body, was gone. Her mouth tasted like her favorite mint tea, brewed strong with a dash of honey. The air smelled like wildflowers, as if someone had poured a hot spring’s day into this abandoned warehouse. Underneath, very faintly, there was the metallic tinge of blood.
She ran.
His body was still warm when she turned it over. His eyes were open, and he was giving her a glassy eyed version of his crossest expression, because at twenty Palamedes had enough worry lines to hold a frown even in death.
The wounds on his body were already closed. He hadn’t been exempt from his own spell, and he’d charged it with enough force that she could still feel the residual energy pinging around her body like lightning. He was whole, and undamaged, and not breathing, with no trace of a soul tied even loosely to anything she could find.
She allowed herself a single moment, with no one around to see her, and the only person who might have judged her gone from the body cooling rapidly in her arms. Her breath shuddered out, lungs aching with the force of it. She didn’t cry, she wasn’t sure she remembered how, but she shook, head bowed over her best friend’s unmoving chest.
Then she sat back, and took stock.
She needed backup. She wasn’t usually interested in backup, but she wouldn't take any risks with this one. She couldn't.
Coronabeth was in California, last they'd heard. She certainly had enough money and connections to make it overnight, but if she called her then Ianthe would know, and Camilla refused to deal with Ianthe without Palamedes. She’d run her right through, and it wouldn’t even kill her, not to mention it would spoil half a decade of polite diplomacy that she was loath to waste.
Abigail and Magnus were the most sensible options, but Abigail was exponentially more powerful within her sphere of influence, and Camilla wasn’t planning on moving Palamedes more than she had to.
Judith and Marta wouldn’t leave their posts at such short notice for anything less than the apocalypse.
Dulcinea would. Dulcy would drop everything and run, and she would be so, so angry if Camilla didn’t call her, in that way that only Dulcy could be angry, with a softness and an edge of grief that made her fury feel like being punched in the stomach, over and over again. Dulcy would hate her for this—but Dulcy was coming out of recovery again, and the last round of chemo had left her white faced and shaking every time she tried to sit up in bed. She would come, without question she would come, and it would kill her.
She would never forgive Camilla for her silence, perhaps, but she would be alive to be angry, and that was what mattered. Palamedes would agree.
Her phone rang, just as she came to the conclusion that she’d known she would reach in the end.
Gideon’s voice was breathless and harried, as though she was being chased at top speed by a particularly annoying ghost. In the background, Camilla could hear a shrill, furious voice snapping orders she couldn’t quite make out. “I don’t suppose Palamedes has just dropped dead of unnatural causes,” Gideon asked, as the shrill voice rose in volume. Camilla could make out the words idiot, fuckshit, and bullass, which suggested that Harrowhark hadn’t been keeping up with her promise to learn more about pop culture.
“Funny you should mention that,” she said, and was relieved to note that her voice was as calm and even as it ever was, without even the slightest rasp to suggest that she’d been screaming at any point during the evening.
“Right,” Gideon said, and then, muffled, as though she’d taken the phone from her ear, “Would you please shut up, I am going as fast as I can!” The background noise subsided sharply into what Camilla could only assume was a profoundly murderous silence. “Don’t move,” Gideon said into the phone again, sounding weary. “We’ll be there in three hours—Hey—”
There was a scuffling sound, and then Harrowhark’s voice came on the line, with a sharpness in her tone that could cut glass and make you eat it. “Don’t move him, Hect. Draw a preliminary ring, and then don’t move him an inch. Keep the scene as clear as you can. You shouldn’t have any other problems tonight—even I felt that backlash, and we’re half a state away—but if you do, take them out without letting them touch him.”
“Of course,” Camilla said, almost annoyed that Harrowhark thought she might abandon Palamedes to nameless threats while she was still breathing, even if he wasn’t.
There was a moment of silence on the phone, and then, “Sorry,” Harrowhark said, brusquely, as if it wasn’t the first time Camilla had ever heard her apologize in the three years that they’d known each other. It would have been the most surprising thing to happen on any other night.
“It’s fine,” she said, because it was, because what Harrowhark Nonagesimus thought of her mattered very little on a good day, and this was not a good day.
There was a clatter, and a sharp swear, and then Gideon was back. “We’ll see you soon,” she said, and the call ended to the sound of Gideon shouting, “THE CAR IS—” and Harrow, shrieking to be heard over her, “THE MAP—”
Camilla sat back, and her shoulders relaxed without her permission. Gideon and Harrowhark might be insane, but they were also some of the most talented hunters in the world, and Palamedes respected them. She was confident that she’d made, if not a good decision, at the very least the right one.
She shifted Palamedes back to the floor as gently as possible, and set about digging through his pockets to find his bag of salt and purified iron filaments. She had work to do.
When they’d discussed the possibility of a failsafe, Palamedes had been oddly sure of his own probable death, particularly for someone as confident in his own abilities as he was. She’d enquired about it, and then regretted it immediately when he settled his grey-washed eyes on her.
He didn’t look calculating, in that moment. She’d expected him to rattle off some series of statistics, but instead he watched her for a moment, with something almost disconcertingly tender in his face—though that might have been her own mistake. Palamedes was rarely ever tender.
“I don’t think I’ll make a mistake,” he said finally, with the arrogance of a person who knew precisely how good they really were. “I can’t rule out dying on purpose, though.”
He’d seen something in her face, as he said that, and he laughed at her, and waved away the unvoiced concern. “I’m not going to go offing myself for an experiment,” he said, which did answer her most burning question. “I wouldn’t die for something as trivial as knowledge.” His tone turned serious and soft, reflective. For a moment she thought he might have forgotten that she was there entirely, and then he locked eyes with her, burning with a strange intensity that he rarely directed at other people. “I might die for something if it was worth it, though,” and before she could even think the question, he said, “I’d die for you, if you needed me to.”
He smiled, then, sudden and sharp, and turned back to his book on summoning spells. “Hopefully it’ll never happen,” he said cheerfully, “but it’s always best to be prepared.”
Then he was utterly lost to the world, tapping out the rhythm of a spell series as he read, and she had to sit next to him in the stuffy reading room of the library, and pretend that something vital hadn’t been gouged out from behind her ribs.
She couldn’t promise that he’d never have to die for her, because they lived a dangerous life, and she would never lie to him, but in that reading room, sitting in the uncomfortable plastic chair, watching Palamedes get increasingly absorbed in the notes he was taking, the fluorescent lights making him look drawn and sickly, apart from his fever bright eyes, she made a vow that while there was still breath left in her body, Palamades would live. She would walk into Hell, or tear Heaven apart, before she let him go.
Then she stood up, grabbed the back of his hoodie, and dragged him out of the library, because he’d been sitting in the same chair for forty-eight hours, and she had rules about how long she would let him do stupid things. Despite his protests, she was sure that his failsafe plans would keep until he got some sleep, and perhaps even ate something that didn’t come out of a vending machine or a coffee shop.
After all, with any luck, they’d never need to use it.
When the car—ancient and trembling and within an inch of death, but still functional anyway, which Palamedes swore up and down had something to do with Harrow’s mysterious necromantic abilities, and Camilla swore up and down she didn’t actually give a damn about if exploring it meant that Palamedes was going to blow off his fingers again—rumbled to a stop in front of the open door, she immediately noticed something was off. As they emerged from the front seats, their faces were serious, and, most unusually, they weren’t speaking.
Camilla was used to seeing Gideon and Harrowhark mid-fight, because they were always mid-fight. Sometimes it was about who ate the last of the crackers, and sometimes it was about who got to drive, and sometimes it was about which blood ritual was going to be least dangerous to perform while still being the most effective. There didn’t seem to be a rhyme or reason to their topic choice, and they never seemed to take anything particularly personally, it was simply their way of making conversation.
It was jarring, to see them silent. Their fights were never quiet for more than a moment or two. Without the shouting, and the threats, and the crackling tension that always seemed to follow them around, it was easier to see how they moved in eerie unison, in perfect step with one another. Gideon slung a duffle bag over her shoulder as Harrowhark crouched beneath her and carefully dragged three slim leather-wrapped cylinders from the undercarriage of the car, handing them up one by one. They walked around the car together, Harrowhark ducking under Gideon’s arm as she slammed the door, and Gideon moving smoothly into the space left open for her on Harrowhark’s right as they made their way over to where Camilla sat vigil. Even their steps were in unison, which was particularly impressive given that Gideon was nearly a foot taller than Harrowhark, and quite a lot of it was in the leg. They matched stride so neatly that it sounded as if there was only a single set of crunching footsteps as they crossed the gravel driveway and entered the warehouse proper.
They came to a halt in front of her, like soldiers presenting arms, and she got her first good look at them in the harsh fluorescent light.
They both looked tired, but more like they’d been driving for several hours, and not as though they’d spent the last several nights awake, which was a relief. She could never be sure of their schedules, and they only saw fit to update anyone on where they were or what they were doing every few weeks, so it was difficult to pin down exactly what job she might have interrupted. Harrowhark’s black jeans and black shirt had no visible tears or smears of unidentifiable substances, and she was relatively uninjured, apart from an ace bandage wrapped around her right wrist, and a thin, healing cut high on her cheekbone. Gideon, of course, was the picture of health and vitality.
They looked at her expectantly. She didn’t beat around the bush—they wouldn’t appreciate it, and she didn’t have time for small talk.
“I’m going down, and I’d like someone to come with me,” she said, and waited.
They glanced at each other, and communicated through a series of barely lifted eyebrows, frowns, and grimaces. Gideon reached out at one point, and touched Harrowhark’s shoulder with a delicacy she rarely displayed. Harrowhark, who hated being touched, leaned into it for a fraction of a second that Camilla caught only because she was looking for it, and then stepped away, letting Gideon’s hand drop smoothly back to her side as they both turned to face Camilla, and Palamedes.
“I’m staying here,” Harrowhark said without ceremony. “Gideon—” and she broke off, and looked over at Gideon.
“I’m going with you,” Gideon said, shooting Camilla a wide, familiar smile, as if she were talking about a walk in the park, and not a march through Hell.
Harrowhark nodded once, briefly, at her, and then turned back to Camilla. “I’ll anchor, and pull you both back when you’ve got him.”
Camilla noted that she didn’t suggest a plan for what she would do if they failed.
Harrowhark chalked a huge array on the ground in front of Palamedes, making his seven foot diameter salt and iron circle look almost dainty in comparison. She had Gideon walking behind her the whole time, setting down little piles of what looked like ash at various points in the concentric rings. When she was done, she reached out and tapped the nearest pile, which shivered, and flattened, spreading out across the circle to cover her chalked lines neatly, with no hint of a break.
Harrowhark stood, dusting her chalky hands off on her pants, leaving behind small white handprints that made Gideon snicker.
“Shut up, Griddle,” Harrowhark said absently, surveying her work. “You’re about to walk into Hell, no one cares about the state of my pants.”
Gideon put a hand theatrically on her heart. “I will always care about the state of your pants,” she said, batting her eyelashes outrageously.
Camilla watched them both from outside the circle, shifting her weight where she stood, and focused on warming up each of her muscle groups individually while she waited for this newest iteration of the Harrowhark and Gideon Show to be done. They were well within the time limit that Harrow had set, and she hadn’t remotely expected them to maintain their silent, serious composure for the entire prep time.
Harrowhark glared at the array in front of her. “I mean it, Griddle. Focus up. If you disappoint me down there—”
“Then you’ll know everything is completely normal?”
Harrowhark whirled around with a snarl.
Gideon reached out almost casually and grabbed Harrowhark’s upper arms to hold her in place. Harrowhark went deathly still, and Gideon leaned down, and pressed her forehead to Harrowhark’s for a long moment. Her eyes were closed, and her face was calm. From where Camilla was standing, she could see Harrowhark’s face too. Her eyes were wide and staring. There was something about her expression that gave Camilla pause. It was open and vulnerable, which was something she had hardly ever before seen on Harrowhark’s face, and she remembered abruptly that for all of her brains and venom and poise, Harrowhark was only just eighteen. She seemed even younger, looking up into Gideon’s face, all of her pinched frowns gone away, with a partly open mouth, as if she had something vitally important to say and couldn’t find the words.
Gideon released her, and stepped back, and by the time she was in place Harrowhark’s face was screwed up into a ferocious scowl. Gideon smiled at her anyway.
“One flesh, one end, eh?” she said, and Harrowhark thumped her small fist against Gideon’s chest, glaring up at her.
“You are my arm and my hand and my sword, Gideon Nav, and you will be ruled by me and me alone. First and last of my house, and don’t you dare forget it.”
Gideon’s smile widened. “Never, dark mistress of my soul.”
Harrowhark stepped on her foot, and whatever bizarre ceremony they were performing was cut short as Gideon howled and Harrowhark looked on smugly with her arms crossed, swaying gently out of reach of Gideon’s retaliatory swipe with practiced ease.
Camilla committed the words of their strange ritual to memory, and discretely copied it down into her phone as well. Palamedes always liked to have more data on Harrowhark and Gideon’s mysterious background, and this talk of flesh and hands and houses would fuel his conspiracy theories for months.
She left her phone with the pile of supplies that she wasn’t taking down with her. Nothing messed with the life of a battery like extraplanar forces, which they’d learned years ago in a particularly nasty fight with Ianthe. Palamedes always forgot, and she was so used to taking his from his hands right before they started something big that she found herself reaching out on autopilot before she remembered that no one was beside her.
Neither Gideon nor Harrowhark noticed her slip, and she was grateful for their deeply unhealthy codependency because it gave her time to shake it off and stand.
As she stepped into the circle, the argument behind her stopped abruptly, and in the space between one breath and the next, Gideon was beside her, a strong, steady presence that felt nothing like the frenetic teenager who’d been arguing with her best friend seconds ago. She glanced over, and Gideon gave her a reassuring smile, with a calm confidence in her face that said she hadn’t missed nearly as much of Camilla’s misstep as she’d hoped.
“See you on the flip side,” Gideon tossed over her shoulder casually, and Harrowhark snorted in return.
Camilla almost turned to see what face Harrowhark was making to produce a sound like that when the world went black, and then they were in Hell.
The walk out was harder than the walk in.
Camilla wondered vaguely if it was because the theologists in the Middle Ages had gotten it right, and Hell really was down where Earth was concerned, so they were walking up to get out. It would be interesting to compare it to Heaven, if she ever got the chance to go, to see if it was easier to walk away from Heaven than it was to walk towards it. The theological implications were fascinating, if nothing else.
Palamedes would probably have some thoughts about it. Palamedes had thoughts about practically everything, she didn’t doubt that when she brought it up he would wheel out some decrepit chalkboard with a theorem outlined already about the relative placement of the planes of Heaven and Hell in comparison to Earth, and a theory about the implications for souls traveling to either place.
She held onto that image, even when Palamedes’ face became fuzzy and indistinct, and the chalkboard swam. It held her together, a combination memory of all of the afternoons that they’d spent in that same corner of the library, lecturing and being lectured to, and a premonition of the future in which they would, they would, do that again.
She couldn’t see anything else. She was deafened, blinded, and dumb to the world outside of her, to whatever Hell was sending to chase them down, or up, or whatever direction they were trudging. She could only feel the burning of her legs as she climbed an endless staircase, and the soft, malleable lightness of a soul—she hoped it was a soul, it had to be a soul—in one hand, and the rough palm of Gideon Nav in the other.
The soul fluttered like the lightest heartbeat of the smallest newborn baby. She wondered if she was really carrying a heart, or if it was the first breath of new life, or if it really was a soul after all. It belonged to someone she loved, that she knew, someone so important that she was here, in the dark place, walking forward and up, and up. Someone who smelled like chalk dust and dried blood. His face flickered in front of her. She couldn’t remember what his name was, but she thought she knew it once, just like she thought she hadn’t always been in the dark place.
The hand in hers squeezed reassuringly. She couldn’t remember what the person attached to the hand looked like, either. She wanted to open her eyes and look up, just to see another person, just to know that she wasn’t alone, that this wasn’t a figment or a phantom of her imagination, but she couldn’t. She couldn’t, or she wouldn’t, she wasn’t sure, all she knew was that she must stay in the dark, and she must go forward.
She thought the person leading her must be very strong, to continue pulling her along, but every time she felt the hand squeeze, all she could picture was a tiny, frail looking girl with dark hair and dark eyes, whose hands were not strong at all, but who looked at her head-on and said, Camilla Hect, come home.
Camilla opened her eyes.
Inches away from her face, the beetle black eyes of Harrowhark blinked, and then crinkled in a rare, startlingly sweet smile.
Then she was up and shouting, the noise indistinct to Camilla’s ears, as if she was underwater.
She closed her eyes, and then opened them again, more slowly. The world swam, but after a moment it held still enough for her to sit up. Her body ached and her stomach lurched, but she focused on looking at the individual grains of cement in the grey floor.
The sound filtered in as she breathed.
“—told you the anchor worked, I don’t make mistakes—”
“Excuse you, I was the one who actually went in—”
“—so it is possible, this is it, we’ve got to talk to Ianthe—”
“—and there’s not a goddamn thing you could do without me—”
“—it was angelic, Griddle, I told you—”
“—I should be getting fucking hazard pay for this shit—”
A hand touched her own. It was narrow and long fingered, dusty with chalk and bonedust and blood under the nails, and devastatingly familiar.
She let her eyes travel up leisurely. His clothes were stained with patches of blood and dirt that hadn’t dried yet, and his shirt would have to be thrown away, or possibly burned. His hair was wet, but she thought it was water, like he’d poured a water bottle over it in a completely ineffective attempt at cleaning up. The only clean thing on his face were his glasses.
He gave her a crooked smile. “Welcome back, Orpheus,” he said.
“Orpheus failed,” she told him, and his crooked smile broadened into a grin. “If you ever do that again, I’ll kill you.”
“I don’t doubt it,” he said lightly, and helped tug her up. She stumbled, and he stayed steady while she found her feet.
His hands stayed on her forearms, and she was grateful for it until he opened his mouth again.
“Aren’t you glad I had a failsafe, though?”
She looked up at him, as flat as she could with her legs still shaking. “You can tell Dulcy.”
He blanched, and she smiled.