Witch Hunter Robin Fan Fiction ❯ Binah (Understanding) ❯ What Rules the Hearts of Men ( Chapter 19 )

Monica Zabini sat with her father in his study. Spread before them on a table were sheafs of paper. Some had broad strokes of black in places; lines that Monica herself had blacked out with indelible ink lest pertinent information be seen by the wrong eyes.

“We don't know for certain, my angel,” her father said affectionately, with a trace of exhaustion in his voice. Only before his daughter did he act his true age—he was old, and tired, and had been in the game for far too long.

She gestured at the files. “Those are our harbors, Papa. And the Girardis are taking over, slowly—they're paying off our men, the weaker ones at least.” She pursed her lips. “We must do something.”

Her father gave her a look that said he knew exactly what she was thinking. It was the truth; blessed with his Craft, he did know exactly what she wanted. Everything else was mere pretense. He did, however, appreciate her civility in asking him with words rather than making her wishes known through simple thought-broadcast. “You want to go and collect evidence,” he said heavily. “For what?”

“So that when we move against them, we will have grounds to do so!”

Vincenzo sat forward. He took his daughter's hands in his. “This is not the time for war between the families,” he intoned. “It is too dangerous, now. The situation is too precarious.”

Monica's dark eyes smoldered. “If we lose our prominence among the families, we cannot provide for the Eve as she needs. If we allow ourselves to become weak now, one weakness will become a thousand, until we cannot protect that which we hold most dear.”

The old man smiled gently. “When did you become so good with words?” he asked.

She smiled back at him. “I've played poker with too many politicians,” she answered.

Vincenzo rolled his eyes and gestured with his muscled shoulders to indicate his contempt and annoyance. “Politicians,” he said scornfully. “You would keep better company with the Devil.”

“The Devil isn't nearly so useful.”

He shook his head at her now, obviously attempting to restrain his laughter. After their many years together, his daughter's wit still managed to surprise him. She held back her wit in most other dealings—the families approved little of a daughter who ran so much of her father's operations, and still less of one with an acid tongue. But she had a keen mind, and just enough mystery to go with her beauty that her Craft, immensely useful in their business as it was, seemed eerie and not quite explicable. The Zabinis were a Craft-using family and had been for hundreds of years. Their venerability stemmed from the entwined pairing of the Craft and shrewd business-dealings, most of which were in one way or another outside the law. Vincenzo was a lucky man. When he lost his beautiful, fragile wife, so extraordinarily sensitive to the thoughts of others that her mind collapsed under the pressure, he gained a daughter whose mind ran more to her father's way of thinking. Her skin was the barrier between herself and the thoughts of others that neither he nor his wife had the luxury of enjoying. Mostly unhampered by the mental noise of the world surrounding her, she made the gift work for her, in business, in love, and at the gaming table.

He stared into his daughter's eyes now, those so like his own, two pieces of smoking coal. “Go,” he said, “and be careful.”

“I will, Papa.” She stood and kissed him on the cheek, then left the room.

***

“This is the Tree of Life,” Malachai said, opening a book and showing them an impressive full-color plate inside. There were English words alongside Hebrew, at each of the nine circles. Amon was vaguely reminded of a pinball machine. If Malachai's introductory remarks were any indication, individual human consciousness moved much like a pinball through the network of circles and lines in the Tree; attaining higher levels of awareness and wisdom at each stop, until finally it achieved godlike understanding at the end of the game. Somehow Amon doubted that when (if) he attained nirvana, electric lights and voices would praise his skill, and his record would be added to that of the other gamers. He wondered if Robin had ever played pinball. Probably not. Not only were trips to the arcade doubtful for convent-girls, she was also most likely too young, in this era of electronic games like Haruto's beloved handheld machine, to know about pinball. It was a disturbing thought.

“Distracted, are we, Amon?” Malachai teased, waking his student from his reverie.

“Only by the complexity of the design, sir,” Amon answered.

“You're not the first,” Malachai told him. “The Sephira are daunting. But as you learn to master your consciousness, you will rise, and your power over your Craft will increase. It is a calm mind that can control one's Craft. The Craft is a fundamentally creative power, although it may be used for destruction, as all creative powers can be. However, like anything creative, it needs space to grow, a safe place for the mind of the user to explore without fear of reprisal, without the worries of tedious, mundane existence. It is as the American writer Virginia Woolf said: what is needed is a room of one's own.”

Robin sighed, frowning over the Sephira. “The Witches in the Walled City don't have that kind of luxury,” she said pensively.
,br>“No, they don't,” Malachai agreed. “Of course, you can understand why Solomon and the governments of the world have made that so. Witches in ghettos cannot organize or rebel, because while they may possess raw individual talent, they have none of the necessary luxuries to help them refine that talent.” He gestured at the Tree. “If they had the proper time, means, and motivation to meditate, they might become a powerful force. Neither Solomon nor the world powers can allow that to happen.” He sighed, and Amon watched the old scholar's eyes lift from the page and alight on Robin's face. Robin stared back at him.

“Until now, of course,” Malachai said quietly.

Amon felt a sudden chill, and knew it had nothing to do with his Craft. He watched Robin's face change, as her mind ingested and processed the meaning of Malachai's words. She aged silently before his eyes. Her mouth set in a single line; her eyes went one degree darker, deepening to that impenetrable jade forest of the night within which hid the secrets of the Arcanum, fiery tigers burning bright.

“That's what the war means,” she said slowly, heavily.

Malachai nodded. “Yes. Liberation does not end with the body.” He swallowed. “You'll remember that in early North American history, it was against the law for slaves to learn how to read.”

Robin frowned. “It's a self-perpetuating cycle,” she said, following the logic. “Because Witches cannot learn to control their powers, they are ostracized. But because they are ostracized, they cannot learn.”

Malachai smiled. His eyes twinkled happily. “You see the paradox of leading Witches,” he said, his delight evident. “I've had many students who refused to see the connection, or were simply too trapped in their bootstrap mythology to see the way that capitalism has negated the very possibility of emancipation.” He turned to Amon. “Americans, you know,” he said, rolling his eyes.

Robin still looked troubled. Although she sat in an uncomfortable old horsehair-and-mahogany chair, she drew her knees to her chest; her posture for deep thought. “Freedom for Witches means freedom of the mind, as well,” she said.

“Yes,” Malachai agreed. “It means freedom to experiment. Freedom to succeed, as well as freedom to fail; that's the only way advances are made. Imagine how silly Galileo must have looked, dropping his weights from a tower, to see which one landed first. But even he was placed under house arrest by the Church. Even Einstein had to flee the Nazis.”

At the mention of the progenitors of the genetic research that had led to Robin's eventual creation, she shuddered. And hearing their comparison to the Church which had raised her was probably doing nothing toward improving her view of her upbringing, Amon reflected. A line was furrowing between Robin's brows, and it had the looks of staying there permanently. She squeezed her knees. “The mind is the part of a person which can't be broken,” she murmured. “It can't be imprisoned. How can I ever hope to free it?”

Malachai smiled ruefully. “Give it hope,” he answered softly. “Hope is mana in the desert—the tiniest grain can nourish a man on the journey out of slavery and into freedom.”

***

Constantino Girardi tried to swallow more milk before his stomach had a chance to burn further. He was developing an ulcer before he was thirty, and it was painful. His doctor had told him to stop drinking so much, and to lay off the coffee and the citrus fruits, to take more vitamins, get more rest, and eat more dairy products; his stomach needed more of a coating before the lining of his intestines flaked away entirely. Constantino guitily got around this rule by taking more milk in his coffee than before, and hoping for the best.

He was a nervous man. His steps were always a bit too quick, his eyes a little too sharp, the movements of his head and hands too abrupt. At night his neck and shoulders ached for the tension held there. It took him hours to sleep. He was cursed with constant alertness.

It was a helpful curse for the man who was the new don of the Girardi family.

His father, Bernardo, was not an ambitious man. He had a modest but decently profitable slice of the organized crime pie in Italy, and was happy with it. He was content not to make waves. He had been content until the night he died quietly of complications from pneumonia; his lack of greed rewarded by a death of natural causes, absolutely no foul play involved. His funeral was well-attended. Constantino, the eldest son, stepped forward to take his father's place. Bernardo was the youngest of three brothers, and had inherited his position from his siblings after their avarice had earned them a few too many bullets in the knees, stomach, and head. Bernardo had worked hard to clear the Girardi name, to associate it within the minds of the other families with peaceful partnership.

And Constantino was about to wreck his father's lifelong work.

It wasn't because he wanted to. In fact, the nagging voices in his mind that had until now kept him out of most trouble shrieked at him to avoid this course of action. He was fine, in the grand scheme. The financial skimming that created his family holdings kept him in a fine Roman apartment equipped with all amenities and allowed him to enjoy life. The family was well, too. His mother Graciela was safely installed in their Capri home for the summer. When the weather cooled, she would go back to Sicily. His little sister, Elena, was thriving at her university, beautiful and talented and in possession of a pack of boys more obedient than trained dogs. She wanted to be an actress. If she ever did become one, Constantino would be very happy.

No, it was the group of his father's old lieutenants that desired more power. And because he was inexperienced, and because, he realized now, he was lonely and bored, he had maneuvered them into gaining it, despite the chiming voices which told him to count his blessings and go home. The lieutenants were younger than his father, had watched the bids for power on the part of his uncles, and knew that the Girardis had come within a few steps of ascending within the family hierarchy. They were a more modern breed than Bernardo or his brothers—they did not believe in the Zabini mystique. Constantino had met Monica Zabini. Silly old Mafia wives' tales of magical powers aside, there was definitely something about Monica and her father, Vincenzo. And it was not something to be trifled with.
everything,” his man stressed. “I don't know how, but she did.”

Constantino sighed. Monica must have chartered a plane and flown to the harbors herself. Trust her to put in a personal appearance and scare the shit out of everyone there, ensuring obedience for the next few months. Ostensibly her visit was to raise group morale and “see how things were doing,” but Constantino knew better. She was on his trail. Still, better her than Vincenzo.

“Sit tight,” he ordered. “Pull back, a little.” He sighed. He was no good at communicating with his operatives, and lacking in such an essential skill was a serious fault, in this business. “How are profits out there?” he asked.

“They could be better,” was the answer. “It's the summer, you know. Things slow down. Wait until the fall. There will be more to move before Christmas.”

“Everyone's favorite holiday,” Constantino said tonelessly, attempting to be jocular and failing miserably. “Well, thanks for letting me know. Don't worry too much. Pull back if you have to. I don't want anyone getting hurt.”

“Yes, sir.” His man on the waterfront hung up.

Constantino sighed. He hated this game. It was dangerous, and he was by nature a cautious person, having inherited his father's disposition toward the uncertain as well as his position in such an uncertain world. He reached into his gargantuan, brushed-steel refrigerator and poured himself a glass of mineral water from an elegant cobalt bottle. He leaned on his polished granite kitchen island, barely used because he couldn't cook to save his life, and reflected. City noise drifted in through the open windows above his sink. There was the distinct possibility that his lieutenants, if they went unappeased long enough, would kill him. They could always attempt an overthrow. Coups were second-nature in this business. And Constantino knew they were not afraid of him. He sipped his water and looked outside the kitchen window. He was a perfect target, positioned like this. If there were sniper in the building across from him, his blood and brains would spatter across the kitchen like so much boiling marinara. And there was his mother to think of. And his little sister.

Christ, what a mess. His stomach burned.

***

For whatever reason, Touko had thought that making the drive between Tokyo and Osaka might clear her head. There was something about driving that flying could not do. It had to do with watching the road rolling away under the tires of her rented white convertible as the wind teased her hair. For once, she didn't care about the style being mussed. There was no one to keep herself pretty for. As far as she was concerned, there never would be, ever again. She was escaping the events in Tokyo. And as she did so, she was saying goodbye the all the difficulties associated with having a heart. It was perfect freedom.

Naturally, she should have known that it could not last forever.

It happened in a small roadside town, the kind that catered solely to tourists on their way to hot springs or other such attractions. There was one tiny pharmacy, manned by a little old man and his shy attendants. She still carried all her prescriptions with her, and needed them filled. She wandered around the tiny town as she waited. She was examining a store display of too-bright tourist clothes when she felt a group of men surround her.

“Miss Zaizen?” one of them asked, and she knew it was all over.

They took her to a white van, armed with a tiny satellite dish and marked as belonging to a cable company which was almost certainly non-existent. She sat down in a little chair inside the back of the van, facing a computer terminal. The van itself hummed and beeped and was almost intolerably hot, for the machinery that whirred inside it and the wires that snaked through it, and the summer sun beating down on the vehicle. She looked around. “Solomon doesn't pay you enough for a refrigerator?” she asked. “If I'm to answer your questions, I could do with a drink of water.”

This was the other nice thing about her recent emotional thunderstorm. In its aftermath, she was just numb enough to be rebellious. Two of the men who had taken her looked annoyed with her, but the third and youngest one held out a bottle of Pokari Sweat and swished it. She made a face. “I don't drink that stuff,” she said disdainfully.

“Suit yourself,” he said, and nodded at the terminal. “This won't take that long.” He took a long swig, and as he did so, the terminal announced an incoming video message. One of the others opened it up, and soon Touko was faced with an old man with white hair and a square jaw.

“Miss Zaizen,” he said. “Do you know me?”

“No,” she answered. “Should I?”

“I should hope not. My name is Inquisitor Gabriel Koushon.”

There was an instinctive clutch of fear in her gut. Touko did her best to dampen it with layers of useful numbness. She was not a Seed. There was no real reason for her to fear an Inquisitor. Yet. She nodded at the older man, indicating that she understood his role, and that he could get to the point.

“I've called you to ask you a few questions about Amon Nagira and Robin Sena,” he continued.

Fear again, and harder to suppress, this time. Touko told herself that her sudden onset of sweat had only to do with the heat, and not with the fact that this man obviously knew all her secrets. She nodded again. “What would you like to know, sir?” she asked. Politeness, at least, would provide a structure to which she might cling.

“Was your little quest successful?” he asked. “Did you find them?”

“How did you know I was looking for them?” she asked, deviating from the question.

“I know a great many things, Miss Zaizen,” Koushon said affably, his words tinged with an air of casual menace. “Answer the question.”

Oddly enough, Touko was reminded somehow of her father. This man had the same aura about him. It was the arrogance that came from being obeyed without question. It had not yet occurred to him that she might not answer his inquiries. Like her father, his mind could not quite wrap around the concept of rebellion, teenage or otherwise. Touko realized with a sharp little spark of pleasure that she was feeling decidedly immature.

“I don't see why I should have to,” she declared, crossing her arms and sitting up higher. “I'm not a Seed, and I'm not a Witch. You're an Inquisitor, not the police. I'm outside your jurisdiction. Just because my father used to work for Solomon doesn't mean I have any affiliations with it.”,br>
“Solomon is paying for your very existence at the moment, Miss Zaizen. We allow you to travel Japan, to live in leisure. You owe us your fealty.”

“No,” she replied archly, “you're the ones who owe me, for not going public with the fact that my father was experimenting on perfectly normal human beings with dangerously pure Orbo, with fatal results.” She sat back a little, and tipped up her chin. “I'm sure my expenses don't even begin to equal the cost he incurred in his last months at the Factory,” she said. “It was Solomon's money that paved the way for human experimentation.”

“You would look like a fraud, should you make such an attempt,” Koushon told her. “Your claim would sound like pure science fiction.”

“There are a lot of people out there who resent Solomon's control,” Touko responded. “Not least of them are the police forces and non-governmental organizations of the world. I'd love to see how Solomon's public relations department handled Amnesty International, the Red Cross, and the United Nations human rights coalition breathing down its neck after certain rumors got around. Even Mother Church would have to turn her back on you in the face of accusations of such inhumane treatment of God's children.” She smiled wryly at this last thought. Solomon was like a little boy hiding behind the Church's skirts. Without that holy and respectable barrier between it and the world, it would collapse.

Koushon folded his hands and let his chin rest upon them. He allowed a beat of silence before he opened his mouth to speak again. “You have yet to answer my question, Miss Zaizen. Where are they?”

Her eyes narrowed. “That wasn't the first question, and you know it. You asked me if I'd found them. Now you're automatically assuming that I did, and that I know where they are. If you're so convinced they're alive, go find them yourself. Are you telling me that the all-powerful Solomon can't find two people?” She snorted. “This kind of thing might work on scared Witches, but it doesn't work on me.”

“If we find Mr. Nagira before he does anything more to help the Witch, things will go easier for him,” Koushon said, as though Touko had not spoken a word. “Don't you want to help him? I thought you loved him. You don't strike me as a particularly fickle person. Is your love so inconstant?”

Touko felt herself split into pieces. Her lips shook. She made fists at her sides. Her twelve-year-old self, the one who had loved Amon from the moment she saw him there in her doorway, said in a clear and plaintive voice: help him, help him, we love him, they'll kill him, we must do as we're told and protect him! Another self, the one who was still running blindly through the rainy Tokyo night, terrified and shocked at Amon's Craft and his betrayal, paused her escape only long enough to say: kill him, kill him, we love him, and he does not love us back. The many of voices of her shattered self moaned in agony at the loss of a hope which had fed so many dreams, which had held the world together. He was her whole world—father, brother, lover, son; childhood hero and womanly fantasy in one. And he had asked to be let free. There was simply nothing left to lose. There was no longer any meaning. And there was no better time for rebellion.

“I don't have to take that from a bloodless Solomon eunuch,” Touko hissed, tears blurring her vision. “I do love him. I love a dead man. But of course you wouldn't understand that.”

And with that she stood and bolted, stumbling out of the van. A hand caught her and she wrenched away, ripping her flimsy summer shirt in the process. She didn't care. She ran through slow-moving tourist traffic and into the pharmacy, heading straight for the bathroom. Swinging doors slammed behind her. She found the single-occupancy bathroom and locked the door with a snap, only to fall down against it, doubled over and crying so hard her face touched the floor. In the cool bathroom dimness, Touko's sobs bounced off the walls and porcelain surfaces, echoing madly. She wept into the unforgiving linoleum, felt the lethal solidity of concrete beneath her too-hot skin.

She did have a heart, after all, much to her chagrin. Leaving Tokyo did not mean leaving the pain behind. And she knew now that although Amon would never have her, she still loved him, helplessly and without hope. And she would do all she could now to help him, to keep him safe from men even more insidious than her father. Touko could never share her life with him. Committing it to protecting him, however, gave her some purpose. She was fresh out of hope—resolution would have to do in the meantime. Resolution, and bitter, bitter hatred, for the organization which had twisted the only two men she ever loved, each in their turn, robbing her of every dream, ensuring that they could never love her back.

“You lose, Dad,” she whispered thickly into the floor.

***

What surprised Amon most about Malachai's special brand of lessons was how much it resembled Hunter training. He found during the meditation sequences that he was doing much the same breathing exercises that helped him aim a weapon properly, or conserve energy during a chase.

He balked, though, at the yoga.

“Your friend is doing it,” Malachai said, his right hand pointed to the sky, his left firmly gripping his left ankle, so that his body formed a triangle. For an aging, seemingly indulgent rabbi, he was remarkably flexible. It was a tad disturbing. He squinted at Amon, then at Robin. She had mirrored the pose easily, although she seemed to have a bit more difficulty holding it. “And she's supposed to be the gawky fifteen-year-old,” the rabbi added.

“Sixteen,” Robin commented.

“Sixteen? Well then. Happy birthday.”

“Thank you.”

“Surely you're not to be upstaged by a sixteen-year-old girl, Amon,” Malachai teased. “You know as well as I do that a calm Witch is a powerful Witch.”

Amon grumbled, but did it. Not that he was truly capable of relaxing during the bends and twists and stretches. Watching Robin bending and twisting and stretching saw to that. He was somehow not surprised later when Robin reported their lessons of the day to Doujima, who, upon hearing of the yoga, said with glee, “You know what that's good for,” and whispered something in Robin's ear. Robin promptly reddened, and shook her head emphatically. Doujima giggled.

He would have cast a commiserating glance Nagira's way, had his brother not been sampling cigars with Vincenzo. Nagira's English was far better than Amon's, and in their expensive tastes, he and the old mobster had found common ground. Monica was allegedly away “on business,” and Doujima quickly disappeared for a swim. Robin trudged upstairs and shut the door to her room. Amon decided that a shower was his best option, and twenty minutes later was wondering when exactly dinner might be served, and thought to ask Robin down to the kitchen with him. She at least spoke the cooks' language.

For once, the door adjoining their rooms was mostly closed. The door had not quite caught the jamb. He stood at the threshold, and listened. Quiet gasps penetrated through the wood. She was crying. There was a time when he might have let her cry alone. However, after events of the recent past, that time was over. They were together in most everything, now. And if something was wrong, he needed to know about it.

Amon strode into the room without knocking, merely opening the door quietly and stepping through. Robin was face-down on her bed, still in her yoga clothes, weeping softly. Amon took a deep breath. This was not his particular area of expertise. Still, Robin had described him to Malachai as her friend. If that was true, then it was his duty to do his best. It had been a long time since anyone described him as their friend. It was even longer since he could say the same.

He squared his shoulders and went to sit down next to Robin on the bed. Standing over her didn't seem right. She wasn't an invalid whose bedside he should stand at, watching for some response. This was Robin, alive and rational despite her current torment. As his weight shifted the mattress a little, Robin turned to him, one wet green eye visible with her head pillowed on her arms.

“They're only tears of self-pity,” she confessed. “There's no need to worry.”

“Worry?” Amon asked, arching an eyebrow. He crossed his arms. “Who said anything about worry? I'm a detective; this is curiosity.”

The visible corner of her mouth pulled up half-heartedly. “You've seen me cry before. What's to be so curious about?”

“There is the small matter of the cause,” Amon answered. “Or is it that you've finally succumbed to the emotional myopia of adolescence?”

“I don't want to start this war,” Robin whispered.

Cold understanding seeped through Amon's veins. So this was the reason. He leaned down a little, grateful for Robin's ludicrous profusion of pillows. “Who says that you have to?” he asked.

“Everyone!” Robin said vehemently. “Monica, Vincenzo, Malachai, Miss Bonn…” She gulped. “Tenchou died for this war…if I turn away from it, his death will have been in vain…” She blinked, and another tear trickled down her face. “But, I still don't want to do it, Amon.”

“Why not?”

“If I do, more people will die,” she murmured, her voice twisted with anguish. “It'll be all my fault. Their blood will be on my hands, if I fail.”

“And if you succeed?”

She turned to face him more fully, both eyes now visible. “All of Solomon's people can't be my enemy,” Robin declared. “There are good people within the organization, I'm certain of it, and they don't deserve to die.”

“Robin,” Amon said gravely, “anyone who attempts to hurt you, be they noble or not, is your enemy. Do you understand that?”

She frowned, and shook her head. “I can't believe that,” she answered. “I think that people are fundamentally good. They don't want to hurt each other. They're forced to, by tyranny and circumstance. I can't just assume that everyone is my enemy. That would be too much like Solomon, assuming they know everything about Witches.”

Amon sighed. She had a point, of course. It was a very idealistic, Robin-like point. “For the sake of argument,” he began, “let's say that only the people directly attacking you are your enemies. Not all of Solomon, just the people who make an attempt on your life. You may have to fight them, perhaps even kill them. To preserve your own life, would you do that?”

Her face was pinched, pensive. “I'm not sure I could help it,” she answered woefully. “The Arcanum wouldn't let me die.”

Amon nodded. “Good,” he said simply. “Now, assuming that you defeat only the enemies who directly threaten your life, will you have succeeded? Will the war be over?” He narrowed his eyes. “Or will you merely have saved your life for the next Hunter, the next enemy, the one who triumphs where all the others have lost?” Robin opened her mouth to speak, but he cut her off. “Is that the life that you want, Robin?” he demanded. “Do you want to run forever?”

Her lips pursed, Robin shook her head miserably. “No,” she whispered.

“Then, what do you want?”

Amon was suddenly aware that their faces were mere inches apart, and that he could feel the heat radiating from her. He couldn't remember when exactly they had drawn so close. Nor could he pinpoint exactly when his heart had begun hammering. But there there it was, pounding away as he found Robin's eyes. Her breath was coming fast and light. “I want,” she stammered, faltering, “I want…”

“Yes?” he breathed.

“I want a real life,” she murmured, staring hard into his eyes. “I want to laugh without wondering when I can do so again, and go outside in the sun without worrying who will see me. And I want my friends to be happy. I want them to be safe.” Her eyelashes dipped suddenly, and a blush rose in her face. “I want children,” she whispered. “I want someone to love me, and to let me love them, and take care of them, and…and…I don't want to be alone…” She was crying again, softly. Slowly, Amon put one arm across her shoulders, and pulled. She inched to him, her body curled up so that only her forehead and shins touched him.

“I don't want to become a monster,” she said through her tears. “I don't want people to be afraid of me. I don't want to command armies. I don't want to have to fight anyone, or kill anyone. I just want things to go back to the way they were before.” She sniffed back tears.

Amon frowned. “You mean our lives at the STN-J?” he asked. “Before all of this?”

Robin shook her head roughly. “No. Like in the apartment, in Tokyo; I want things to be like that, again.”

He smiled ruefully. “I thought you said you wanted sunlight,” he said. “I never let you have any.”

She tipped her head up to face him. “I'm willing to compromise,” she said.

Amon shook his head gently. “Don't compromise on the light,” he intoned. “You need it, to grow.” He tousled her hair. “You need to be free, to grow, and be strong; not to be shut up somewhere with a paranoid ex-Hunter like me.”

Robin bit her lower lip. “Maybe if it had a lot of windows…”

He almost laughed. Instead he drew her head to his chest again, and settled his chin atop it. “There you go, compromising again,” he said. “There are some things on which there can be no compromise.”

“Like what?” Robin asked.

“Whisky,” Amon quipped. He was answered by a stiff poke in the ribs.

“I mean it,” Robin protested.

“I know,” Amon said. “I suppose that the answer is different for everyone. Take my stupid brother, for instance. Most litigators would place their law practice topmost among their priorities, but where is he now? Losing thousands by the day, just to…” He gestured vaguely, not really wishing to complete the sentence.

“To watch over you,” Robin said.

“To watch over both of us.” He sighed. “Because that's what's important to him, I guess. He's always been the better brother, between us. Solomon could have split the family entirely, but he wouldn't let it happen.” His lip twisted. “And even though he has no powers of his own, the silly bastard still wants to back us up.”

“I owe a great deal to your family,” Robin murmured.

“No more than what we owe you,” Amon countered. This seemed to leave her quiet, for she sighed a little and wormed closer to him. Someone less experienced with Robin might think she was preparing for sleep, but Amon knew from the tension in her shoulders that she was preparing a thought. Robin was capable of startling clarity at times, but it meant that she couldn't think of many things at once. Thoughts fermented inside her, and they required stillness and a purity of elements to attain their peak. He'd learned not to distract her.

Presently, she spoke. “What's important to you, Amon?”

He frowned. It wasn't an easy question to answer, mostly for the fact that he could sense that the answer itself had changed. At one time, he would have said: respect for authority, striving for excellence, maintaining an impenetrable barrier between the self and the contaminating influences of the outside world. It was an almost monastic existence. Of course, Robin had made short work of that. His world, once thought to be so rigidly ordered, was in fact as fragile as any other human creation. The truth was that nothing endured. Anything could change. Amon was now the complete opposite of everything he had ever tried to be.

But he'd done his best to keep his word, throughout all of it. He had made an oath to Solomon, and had done all he could to fulfill it. In a sense he was still fulfilling it, making one Witch the focus of his energy rather than random Witches. He hadn't yet killed Robin, but he had worked very hard to defuse her threat. In so doing, he had made a promise to her—to preserve her identity in his mind, thereby providing an avenue by which she might remember herself, despite whatever forces tore at her in their attempts to exploit her abilities, despite the temptation to use those abilities for ill.

“Promises,” he answered finally. “My word. When I swore to kill you, I knew I would have to do it, or die trying. But you wouldn't let me.”

“I'd never let you die, Amon.” This was said with such a quiet intensity and conviction that it gave Amon pause. There was some other layer in her words, something he couldn't quite grasp. Robin rarely spoke in riddles. It simply wasn't in her nature. In any case, the onus was on him to answer.

“I know,” he said. “Believe me; I've learned my lesson on that particular subject.”

“All right,” she murmured, nodding against his chest. The tension left her shoulders. It seemed impossible to him that she should place such importance on his knowledge of this fact—he wasn't about to lose faith in her. He'd stopped feeling unsafe around her ages ago. Given past evidence, it was she who should have worried for her own safety around him. A hand on his stomach distracted him from further contemplation, however.

“I'm sorry,” Robin apologized. Her face had moved up again. “You were hungry. We can go downstairs, now.”

He frowned. “How did you know that?”

She shrugged. “I just knew.” A thought occurred to her. “Maybe because I'm hungry, too?”

“On that theory, only one of us needs to eat, if it fills up the other one.”

“Does that mean I can have all the desserts?”

“Very funny.” Amon nudged her a little. “I thought you said you were hungry.”

“Your arm is on my hair,” Robin answered.

“Well, your head is on my arm.”

“Excuses…” She clucked her tongue.

“Do I have to carry you?”

“I'm very tired, would you?”

Amon's answer was to give a very tiny smile, and concentrate his Craft into the very tips of his fingers until they felt almost numb, finally touching their icy surface to Robin's warm, bare neck. Her eyes widened to saucers and her hand flew to her mouth, a squeak escaping her as her entire body jumped next to his. “It wasn't that cold, was it?” Amon asked.

She shook her head silently. “Not cold,” she answered, surprise still evident in her voice. “It felt like…electricity.”

“You feel it, too, then?” Amon wiggled his fingers, relieving the tension placed there by using the Craft. “I thought it was just my Craft reacting to yours, before.”

“Why wouldn't mine react to yours, if yours reacted to mine?” Robin asked. She sat up, now, looking him in the face.

He shrugged. “You're the stronger one. I thought it might be different.”

She shook her head. A line appeared between her brows. “You feel that every time I…?”

Amon nodded. “Every time.”

Wonder was writ large on her fine features. “I had no idea…” Concern replaced the awe. “Did I ever hurt you?”

“Never.” Quite the opposite, Amon thought, remembering her hands on his naked skin, innocently soothing away his Craft-induced shivers, sending him higher than he'd ever been in the process. The realization that he could do the same to her was a startling one. It appeared the little shocks were a two-way street. He wondered if he could flood her blood with gold the way she'd done for him. Unbidden, memories of Robin's voice assailed him—her voice as it sounded through a closed door, arcing upward as a dream-lover from another Witch's past pleased her, over and over. With the Craft, he might possibly do the same…

Violently, Amon shook his head. “Never,” he repeated, forcing himself to look at Robin's innocent, concerned face. “Never ever.”

Robin nodded, apparently appeased. “Hungry?” she asked.

“Very.” But he didn't say for what.