“If you know them, or what to look for,” Alistair reminded him. “It still takes a while. There are no shortcuts.”
Nicodemus frowned. “You couldn’t just summon them to you?”
The room got very quiet. The storm raged outside, the wind almost like wailing.
Nicodemus looked around again. “Because I am pretty sure I did that.”
Bel’s grin was magnificent. “You did, lamb. Twice.”
No one else was speaking. Nicodemus swallowed as he met several stunned gazes. “Is that not allowed? I don’t have much imagination, not like you all do. But I ask questions. There are a lot of problems always in the air in a house like this, and I try to find the easiest solutions.” He looked back at Bel.
“He’s as strong as you’re thinking.” Bel seemed to savor the words he said to the others. “But nothowyou’re thinking, I’ll bet. Nicodemus is too practical to consider any traditions or assumptions that might get in the way. He always looks, but listens only when he feels like it.” Bel added that softly, with a gaze like hot coals.
“Oh!” Percy was grinning now, though turning to Bel. “Is it true he called for you and you heard him?”
“Who told you that?” Nicodemus demanded, cheeks stinging.
Bel watched, enjoying his squirming. “Yes.”
He seemedproud.
“Could you always hear him?” Donovan, of course, would not let this go.
Bel tipped his head toward the table without looking away from Nicodemus. “When he really wanted me to.” He finally, slowly, turned toward the others. “If you have a problem, I’m not saying Nicodemus will solve it, but he will definitely offer you a perspective you did not have before. Nicodemus does not know what normal is. You do, and you are bound by it. He is not. His collars are stiff and well-ironed. He looks like sugar and cream. But that is not what he is.”
“What is he?” It was Rosa who finally asked, breaking the hushed silence that followed Bel’s silky words.
“Terrifying,” said Bel, as if he liked that very much. “When he forgets to not be.”
Nicodemus was not sure about that, not any of it.
He inhaled through his nose and sat still while the others digested this, listening because Bel said it, and Bel awed them all, even if just slightly.
Bel gave him a smile that was mean and did not take his words back or apologize for them. He said, “Powerful little lamb,” as he had said it before, and Nicodemus rose to his feet and headed without thought to the kitchen.
Once there, he stood before the table for several moments, noting the cooler temperature of the room, the mess from making the cider. He stacked his dishes in the sink, thinking of how he used to watch Bel and avoid him at the same time, and how it had less to do with Bel and more to do with the things Nicodemus had wanted to demand from Bel. He hadn’t known the name for them, or even how to name them, but he had wanted them. The Realm had showed him.
Nicodemushadforgotten.
He left the dishes where they were and spent several minutes staring at the wall. Once his face no longer stung and his heart was no longer racing, he reached for the whiskey he had borrowed before.
He sniffed it and shuddered for the revolting smell that was so different when it was all over Bel. Nicodemus didn’t like spirits. He didn’t smoke. He didn’t chase monsters.
Unless they had angered him by touching Bel. Then he supposed he did.
Bel was not wrong.
Nicodemus banished monsters, and summoned monsters to him, and he wooed them. That was part of why Bel loved him.
Bel moved to stand up the moment Nicodemus came back into sight.
“Lamb, of all of them, you are—”
He stopped when Nicodemus held out the cup of whiskey. It was a cup more for tea or coffee than liquor, but Nicodemus had been too impatient to go to one of the cabinets where they kept such things.
The conversations around them once again fell to nothing.
Bel took the cup from him but didn’t drink.
