Divinity Circuit (Senyaza Series Book 5) Read online

  Divinity Circuit

  Chrysoula Tzavelas

  Contents

  Dedication

  Previously in...

  1. Marley

  2. Marley

  3. Branwyn

  4. Marley

  5. Branwyn

  6. Marley

  7. Branwyn

  8. Marley

  9. Branwyn

  10. Marley

  11. Marley

  12. Branwyn

  13. Branwyn and Marley

  14. Marley

  15. Branwyn

  16. Branwyn

  17. Branwyn

  18. Marley

  19. Branwyn

  20. Marley

  21. Branwyn

  22. Marley

  23. Branwyn

  24. Branwyn

  25. Marley and Branwyn

  Epilogue

  Afterword

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Also by Chrysoula Tzavelas

  Maybe you’ve got a monster in your head?

  This one’s for me and you.

  Previously in the Senyaza Series…

  I aim to make most Senyaza stories 90% self-contained. But this is a story about consequences. So I thought I’d provide a very brief recap of some of the lingering points in the two stories this directly follows (along with notes on how the other two books fit in). If you’ve read the rest of the series recently, feel free to skip ahead to the story.

  Matchbox Girls

  Anxiety-ridden grad-school dropout Marley discovers she’s a nephil, the child of an unknown angel, and saves the lives of twin girls prophesied to destroy the world. There’s an angel, Ettoriel, who wants to use them in a ritual to erase the magical Hush, which prevents angels from dominating the world; Marley eventually defeats him with the power of information. Along the way, she meets fellow nephil Corbin; discovers a whole hidden world of nephilim, angels, Fallen and wizards; and becomes the full-time babysitter of the twins, Kari and Lissa. Meanwhile, her friends Branwyn and Penny find themselves pulled into supernatural trouble of their own. They all come to the attention of Senyaza, the communications corporation that originally created the Hush. Normally Senyaza would have stopped the angel, but they had a crisis of their own around the same time…

  Infinity Key

  Penny is in a coma, with her soul mostly burned out by Ettoriel in the previous book. While Marley deals with being tugged romantically between Corbin and the twins’ guardian Zachariah, Branwyn focuses on finding a mortal magic that suits her and will allow her to do the impossible task of saving Penny. She makes contact with the faeries and is pulled into a plot to fully unleash them back into the world, which only partially succeeds. In the process of saving Penny, Branwyn learns how to enchant mundane objects and even give them rudimentary life, which is a magical skill long missing from the supernatural world. She repeatedly runs into a particularly annoying fallen angel called Severin, who has a knack for upsetting her, especially when he saves her life. One object she wakes up is the Senyaza skyscraper known as Titan One. She also manages to give Penny a prosthetic soul made from fragments of celestial Machines, the vast heavenly engines that power and structure the underside of Creation.

  Wolf Interval

  This is a spin off that follows AT, a supporting character from the other two books. Marley and Branwyn make an appearance near the end of Wolf Interval, but it has very little bearing on the events of Divinity Circuit.

  Etiquette of Exiles

  This is a collection of short stories, in which Branwyn forges a hammer from a Machine fragment and Penny’s new soul causes her some problems, among other side adventures.

  Chapter One

  Marley

  There was something about being over a thousand years old that made a man resistant to reasonable arguments, Marley mused. Especially when it was an argument that he should change all his plans based on her suggestion. She could predict the exact course of the discussion she and her employer were having, but she had to have it anyhow, to lay the groundwork for the future.

  As she anticipated his response, she sat in a deck chair on the grass outside his beautiful house and watched her employer’s children splash in a sprinkler. It was a sizzling July morning, and she was conscientious. It was, after all, just possible the sun might get to them, through the layers of sunscreen and her own magical guardianship.

  Zachariah, said employer, leaned against the wall of his house. He was watching her. “In any case, nephilim have always been schooled at home.”

  “I wasn’t,” Marley pointed out. “And I wouldn’t be who I am now without the friends I made in school. It’s just kindergarten, Zachariah.” She stroked the head of the extra-tall cat lounging beside her chair, as if she could draw patience off the calico fur. It would be so nice to convince him to see reason without having to chart out lots of debates in advance.

  “It’s dangerous,” he said. “And not just for them.”

  “Nothing has happened to them since you hired me. Based on the evidence, it’s not going to be that dangerous. And you don’t actually care about anybody else,” Marley pointed out. “Your turn,” she added, as the splashing became hair pulling, because it was too much to expect she could protect the twins from each other. She saw a flicker in his aura and added, “If Kari bites you, it’ll hurt.”

  Zachariah strode onto the lawn and into the fray, without the slightest concern for the water spraying everywhere. As he wrestled the fighting twin girls apart, the water soaked through his t-shirt, outlining the strong muscles of his torso and damping his black hair. Marley’s cat, Neath, sat up and purred as she watched him intently.

  Marley said, “Yes, yes, I know.” She sighed. Zachariah was attractive enough that even a cat noticed.

  The ancient nephil employed her to protect and care for his children, because she had inherited a rare guardian magic from her unknown mother. But it wasn’t just a job and Zachariah made no attempt to hold her at a professional distance. Really, it was the opposite. He was always trying to draw her in closer. And sometimes she wasn’t sure why she resisted.

  There’d been nights after the children had been sent to bed when she’d been lonely or worried and he’d comforted her. On other nights she’d thought she sensed cracks in his steely self-control and reached out. And he’d welcomed her, held her, made her feel good. But the sense of a gulf between them never really faded.

  Zachariah’s mouth, so often hard and unyielding, softened as he inspected Lissa’s bruised arm and Kari’s tender scalp. “Girls. You have to be gentle with each other.”

  Marley watched him, her eyes narrowed against the brightness. It was when he was directly handling Kari and Lissa that she found him the most attractive, and when she most doubted his intentions toward her. She knew he loved them. There was nothing he wouldn’t do for them.

  That was part of the problem, though. She couldn’t trust that he cared about her beyond her ability to supernaturally protect the kids. He never softened like that with her.

  The other problem—the bigger problem—was that she never felt right about it the next day. She always found herself looking at her phone, hoping for a message from somebody else. A very particular somebody else, whom she hadn’t heard from in months.

  As the girls hugged each other and returned to playing, he strode back to Marley, slicking water off his shirt. “Let’s compromise. How about a private school? I have interests in several private institutions. They begin at middle school but I’m sure I could convince one of them to start a kindergarten program for a year or two.”

  Yes, there was nothing he wouldn’t
do for the twins.

  Marley blinked up at him, startled. She’d thought she’d known how this conversation would go. He’d say no, she’d drop it for the moment and bring it up again later. Maybe the twins would get a chance to try an ordinary school by third grade. “Let me get this straight. You’re offering to buy a private school as a compromise solution.”

  He shrugged, expressionless, and went back to leaning on the wall. “Your protection fades with distance. You’d have to attend with them. It’s the only way to be safe.”

  “No,” said Marley. “Absolutely not. They have to learn how to interact with ordinary people, without having us hovering over them all the time.” She glanced at the splashing girls, then tossed Neath’s favorite ball into the spray. Doglike, the cat sprang into the wet after it. The girls shrieked in delight as Neath batted it through the water to them.

  Marley lowered her voice and said, “Look, I’ve been reading your own books. What happened last summer—the valence event—won’t reoccur for another seven years. And the valence event was the only reason the angels… meddled.”

  ‘Meddled’ was a very kind euphemism for ‘tried to kill two little girls’ but Kari had finally stopped having nightmares every evening, and Lissa’s art had become a little less grim. Why wreck that?

  “No, it wasn’t. It wasn’t even the only reason we’re aware of, Marley,” said Zachariah calmly. He was always calm. It made her feel like she was the unreasonable one, even when she’d done her research and laid out her evidence. “And they’re not the only threat. Others know what’s expected from the girls; others will try to influence what comes.”

  “Well, they haven’t in the last year,” said Marley testily. “Nobody has tried anything.” Zachariah, over a millennia old, could be endlessly patient; Marley, not even thirty, hadn’t learned that knack.

  “And what if that’s because you’ve been present? Don’t underestimate what you do, Marley.”

  Marley couldn’t argue. Her guardian magic, while it was limited by details like distance, number of targets, and the target’s own willingness to be protected, could work as a bulletproof vest. But it had a more subtle effect, too. Thrown stones were more likely to go wide, or the thrower would get distracted before releasing his missile, or change plans at the last minute. Absorbing a physical attack was only necessary when somebody was really dedicated to doing premeditated harm.

  She shifted uncomfortably, fidgeting with her sunglasses. This wasn’t quite going the way she’d planned. But it was important. The twins had a frightening amount of power and how they were brought up was going to matter.

  The angel who had tried to kill the twins had shown Marley a dark vision of a destroyed future. It was, he’d claimed, his motivation for what he wanted to do. He was saving the world. Marley had set herself directly against that. She didn’t believe the girls, with their enormous magical potential, were destined to be destructive—but she did believe they could be made that way. They could grow that way. Zachariah’s urge to wrap them in cotton had to be balanced by giving them connections to the rest of the world, and she was the only one who could do that. She was the only one with the leverage to get Zachariah, isolated from so many of his peers, to shift his position.

  While she was marshaling her next argument, Zachariah counterattacked. “Move in with me. We can drop them off at school each morning—or put them on the bus, if you insist on that too—and you can use that danger sense of yours to assess the day ahead. If you’re around the rest of the time, that’s an acceptable tradeoff. For them and for me.”

  Marley’s breath caught in her throat. She’d avoided having that particular conversation for so long, dismissing his hints lightly, laughing at the kids’ suggestions like they were jokes. She didn’t want to deal with saying no, and she wasn’t ready to say yes.

  Neath left the water, homing in on her distress like a magnet. The big cat jumped into her lap and hissed at Zachariah, who was unfazed. The sudden infusion of wet fur, followed shortly by wet, curious children, was a serious interference to Marley’s already wildly careening thoughts.

  “Won’t you play with us, Marley?” asked Kari, tugging on the swimsuit strap beneath Marley’s tank top.

  Lissa looked between Marley and Zachariah, then at Neath. “Are you two fighting?”

  “Are we?” Zachariah asked, raising one eyebrow at Marley. “I didn’t think so, but look how upset Neath is.”

  Just what I need, a mood-ring cat. Marley shoved Neath off her lap, which left an opening for Lissa to move in. She hooked an arm around Marley’s neck and whispered, “It’s okay, Marley.” Then she kissed Marley’s cheek, exactly like Marley soothed her when she was upset.

  “What’s okay?” asked Kari.

  “I don’t know,” answered Lissa. “I thought maybe she’d seen something scary. Like maybe a shadow blaster from Pixiebots.”

  “I didn’t see anything scary. I was just surprised by something,” Marley told them, painfully aware that Zachariah’s eyebrow was still raised inquisitively.

  Her phone beeped an alarm, and Marley scooped it up gratefully. “Hey! Time for you guys to go make lunch with your uncle, and time for me to go meet Penny and Branwyn.”

  Kari pouted. “Why can’t they come have lunch here?”

  “It’s a special place Penny chose,” Marley explained, dumping Lissa gently off her lap. “Just us girlfriends. Reconnecting. You’ll make friends like that someday, when you go to school.”

  “Reconnecting,” said Zachariah, deadpan. “With the friends you talk to every day.”

  “Well, you know, as an employee I’m entitled to a lunch break and days off and a paycheck, and it’s up to me how I spend them.” She couldn’t raise one eyebrow so she raised both at him as she stood. Something flickered in his eyes and she couldn’t tell if it was amusement or annoyance.

  “Are you worried about losing your paycheck, Marley?” His voice was suddenly low and seductive. Shivers ran down her spine, as she remembered other times he’d sounded like that.

  Firmly she shook her head and knelt to hug the girls. “Your uncle is being silly. What’s a silly thing to have for lunch? It’s the right time to ask.”

  Kari’s eyes brightened. “Whipped cream chocolate chip crepes.” She turned toward Zachariah and moved in like a cub stalking a full-grown tiger. Marley smiled and then went inside to the downstairs bathroom to change into street clothes. Lissa and Neath both followed her into the bathroom.

  “Neath says something upset you,” accused Lissa as Marley reached over her head to close the door. Neath sat down and started licking the water from her fur.

  “Does she?” Marley gave Neath a dark look. The calico never talked to her. “How exactly does she talk? Does she lick her paws once for yes and twice for no? Twitch her whiskers in code?”

  “She just does,” said Lissa uncomfortably. “Everything talks. You just have to listen. Why are you upset?”

  Marley bit her lip and scanned the girl’s aura. As always, a set of images representing possible futures flickered over the girl’s head. Because Lissa was under Marley’s protection and nothing unusual was happening, the strongest image—a sense more than a visual, really—was of safety and health. But she could say the wrong thing here, oh yes. Even without her magic, she knew that.

  Carefully, fumbling for the right words, she said, “Zachariah and I were talking about grown-up things. You don’t need to worry about it because it isn’t going to change things between you and me at all.”

  Lissa stared at her for a long minute, her electric blue eyes intense until abruptly she relaxed. “Business stuff. Okay.” She tilted her head, listening. “Oooh, crepes!” Then she flung open the door to vanish down the hall.

  Marley relaxed too. Addressing a four-year-old’s self-interest so often seemed to be the best option. Quickly, she finished dressing in street clothes and brushed her chestnut hair. Neath watched her intently.

  “Whose side are you on, anyhow?”
Marley asked the cat. The cat meowed, as if she understood every word Marley said. Since Marley was assured by various experts that the cat was actually an angelic construct, it was probably true. The cat certainly had plenty of other powers, like the ability to join Marley no matter what barriers stood in the way.

  Marley thought about one of those experts, the one who she hadn’t talked to in months. Corbin. Then she glanced in the mirror, inspecting the magical charms inlaid on her spiritual Geometry. Corbin had crafted two of the seven.

  Zachariah, a much older and more experienced wizard than Corbin, had been trying for months to get her to let him replace Corbin’s charms with more polished spells. She’d steadily resisted. As long as she had the charms, she felt connected to their creator. One of them was an inactive life-support charm. She was pretty sure if he was badly hurt or dead, the charm would fade from its node. Checking it on it reassured her that whatever he was doing, he was probably fine.

  She emerged from the bathroom and found Lissa and Zachariah waiting for her in the hall. Lissa held a spatula. From the kitchen, Kari shouted, “Woohoo, I’m whisking!”

  “That’s going to be a mess,” Marley pointed out.

  Zachariah shrugged, unflappable. He glanced at Lissa, who was holding his hand tightly.

  The little girl tugged on his hand and said, “You two hug and make up. No biting.”

  Zachariah snorted, but shook his hand free of Lissa’s and crossed to Marley. “Her Majesty commands it,” he said softly, and held out a hand to her.

  Marley stepped into his arms, slid her hand around his neck, and gave him a kiss on the cheek. “We’re the adults, you know.”

  He pressed his nose against her hair. “Oh, I know. Let’s finish that conversation later tonight. We can persuade each other.”