Valentine's Arrow

30: The Demon Whisperer

Science and reason will tell us so

The blood in our veins are just chemicals

Better believe I keep my demons to myself

Better believe it's getting harder

~ St. Lucia, Dancing on Glass

CHAPTER THIRTY

JOCELYN

Sebastian had never reminded Jocelyn so much of Valentine. In his white knit shirt, he was almost his father's spitting image, except for his slender frame, which - Jocelyn realized with a shudder - he'd inherited from her.

He smiled humorlessly at her from the doorway. "Mother," he said.

She crossed her arms over her chest. "What are you doing here, Jonathan?"

He shook his head, still with the same smile on his face, and drew a dagger from his belt. It was narrow, with a thin blade - like an awl. "If you call me that again," he said, "I will put your eyes out with this."

Jocelyn swallowed. She could remember holding him, cold and still in her arms, not like a normal child at all. He hadn't cried. Not once. "Is that what you came to tell me?"

He shrugged. "I came to ask you a question." He glanced around the room, his expression bored. "And to show you something. Come. Walk with me."

The corridor outside the room was stone, big blocks of limestone slotted together with concrete. The floor was smooth, worn down by footsteps. Yet there was a dusty feel to the place, as if no one had been in it for decades, even centuries.

There were doors set into the walls at random intervals. Jocelyn felt her heart begin to pound. Luke could be behind any of those doors. She wanted to dash at them, jerk them open, but the dagger was still in Sebastian's hand, and she didn't doubt for a moment that he knew that better than she did.

Finally, Sebastian spoke. "What if I did tell you I loved you?"

Jocelyn clasped her hands loosely in front of her. "I suppose," she said carefully, "that I would say that you could no more love me than I could love you."

They had reached a set of double doors. Shouldering them open, he said, "Aren't you supposed to pretend, at least?"

"Could you? Part of you is me, you know. The demon's blood changed you, but did you really think that everything in you otherwise comes from Valentine?"

Without answering, Sebastian shouldered the doors open and stepped inside. After a moment Jocelyn followed - and stopped in her tracks.

The room they had entered was huge and semicircular. A marble floor stretched out to a platform built of stone and wood rising against the western wall. In the center of the platform sat two thrones. There was no other word for them - massive ivory chairs overlaid with gold. Each had a rounded back and six steps leading down from it. An enormous window, glass reflecting nothing but blackness, hung behind each throne. Something about the room was oddly familiar, but Jocelyn couldn't have said exactly what.

Sebastian bounded up onto the platform and beckoned her to follow him. Jocelyn moved slowly up the few steps to join her son, who stood in front of the two thrones with a look of gloating triumph on his face. She had seen the same look on his father's face, when he'd gazed down at the Mortal Cup.

"I don't understand," Jocelyn said, and her voice came out bleak and dead even to her own ears. "You want to rule this world? Some dead world of demons and destruction? You want to give orders to corpses?"