The practical implications, at least, are clear. Erath can’t simply go to the Coven estate and destroy everyone in it. He can only harm those who are harming Penny, and right now no member of the Coven is actively reaching for her.
What he should do is have Penny release the bond. Get Sidney somewhere safe. Resolve the Coven problem through the channels available to him, August and the Order and whatever leverage Vivi can dig up from the souls who’ve recently arrived. Let Sidney go back to his bar and his ugly apartment and his life, far away from gods and covens and things that come up from the dark.
That’s a plan. That’s the correct, responsible, strategically sound plan.
He holds onto it for about twelve minutes before Vivi accosts him.
She has a list. Vivi always has a list. She’s been in the underworld so long she’s become part of its infrastructure, a spirit whose edges have gone translucent with age and whose opinions have only gotten sharper. She manages the daily operations of the dead with an efficiency Erath has never been able to replicate and has long since stopped trying to. She is also, unfortunately, perceptive.
She’s halfway through her daily briefing, something about a backlog at the eastern crossing and a dispute between two spirits who died simultaneously and can’t agree on precedence, when she stops mid-sentence. Studies him. Raises an eyebrow.
“You get everything taken care of up there? Everything okay with Penny?”
“Penny’s fine. She’s at Maggie’s.” Erath follows Vivi toward the river of souls, which is murkier than it should be. Something hasdied badly. Something complicated, something that shouldn’t be intermingling with the regular flow, and the water has gone gray and sluggish where it should be green and moving. He goes to his knees at the bank, shrugs off his coat, and plunges his hand in up to the elbow. “She’s adopted a mundane.”
“Adopted. Like a stray dog? Snuck it a piece of hot dog and now it’s following her around?”
“Something like that.”
“And this troubles you because…?”
Something slimy and bony brushes his fingers in the murk. He grabs for it and misses. He stretches further, arm in to the shoulder, the edges of his shirt going dark. “Because she’s made him death-touched and now they’re linked. I don’t know that she knows how to undo it.”
“Of course she doesn’t know how to undo it. She’s a child. Can’t you undo it?”
He doesn’t actually know the answer to that. He never tried. Angelica severed the bond when she stabbed him and took Penny. Because Penny’s trust in her shattered and, with it, so did their link. He didn’t have to pull Angelica away from them because she did that on her own. In theory, he should be able to. If Sidney is truly death-touched then Erath should be able to manipulate his presence.
He goes too long without answering and Vivi’s eyebrows raise.
“Do you not want to?” she asks plainly.
The question is casual. Vivi’s questions are always casual. They’re also always pointed, and this one lands exactly where she aimed it.
“It doesn’t matter what I want,” Erath says. “It matters what’s…”
There. His fingers close around something that thrashes and shrieks and spits a venom that sizzles against his skin without doing damage. He hauls it out of the river. It’s bat-shaped, if batshad six legs and a mouth full of needle teeth, and it screams in a frequency that would rupture a mortal’s eardrums. A soul-eater. Vermin. They feed on spirits in the river and then find their way back above and cause problems for the Templars. He crushes its neck in his fist and tosses the body onto the bank where it crumbles to ash and the wind takes it.
The water clears. The gray recedes. The green returns. Souls begin to move again, drifting downstream, and the river resumes its constant, murmuring hum.
He stands. Wipes his hand on his pants.
Vivi is still giving him the look.
“Far be it from me to suggest,” she says, “that you have a conversation with your daughter about boundaries with the living.”
“She’s five. She doesn’t understand boundaries.”
“Imagine when she’s thirteen and she’s bound herself to some teenage boy.”
The look that crosses Erath’s face is, apparently, extraordinary, because Vivi points her index finger at it and says, “Yes. See. Start early or she’ll be uncontrollable.”
“Noted,” he says flatly.
“You didn’t answer my question.”
“Which one?”
“Do you want to undo the bond or are you also attached to this human she’s adopted?”
