by Kim Harrison
The air shifted, and the breath in me hissed over my teeth as the salt in it burned. My sweat had gone cold, and I shivered as Trent’s black slippers scuffed to a halt and he dropped to his knees before me, his hands outstretched but afraid to touch me. There was a bloody stick beside me, and horror trickled through me as I realized it was my arm. I wasn’t soaking in sweat but blood.
“Please make it stop hurting,” I whispered, then gasped when Trent turned me over and lifted me into his arms. The twin sensations of fire and ice flashed like a cracked whip over my skin, and I clenched my body, gasping as his aura—Trent’s aura, golden and hazy—came between me and the world.
The burning eased, and I looked up at him, lungs heaving. The air hurt, but I couldn’t get enough in me. Ku’Sox was going to win. I was going to die. I felt it.
“Is she going to be okay?” Bis said, and I smelled cinnamon and wine, warm from the sun. Trent’s aura wasn’t enough, and I felt bits of me flaking off, but it gave me enough relief so that I could breathe. “It’s better, right, Ms. Morgan?” the gargoyle asked, shifting from foot to foot just inside my narrow range of vision. His red eyes turned to Trent. “Can you fix her?”
“I don’t know.” The arms under me shifted, and a blissful coolness sifted over me like shaded sand. I hissed at the scraping sensation, my eyes closing. He smelled like hot wine, and all my muscles relaxed. I was leaking more than blood. My thoughts and memories were flaking from me every time the wind blew.
“But you have to,” Bis said, and I heard a bird crying far away. My eyes were burning, and the trails of tears were like fire on my cheeks. “You simply have to. That’s why I brought her here.”
Trent shifted, and I stifled a groan. “She’s lost a lot of it,” he said. “Mine can’t keep her alive until she starts to make her own again.”
It. He meant my aura, and I began shuddering in earnest, unable to stop. My muscles were seizing, and everything was going cold, even the fire licking what was left of my soul. My body was shutting down. I couldn’t stop it.
“But you made her do this!” Bis exclaimed. “You made her believe she could! You can’t just let her die!”
There was silence, and I felt Trent’s grip on me tighten.
“Rachel? Rachel!”
It was the silence that got my attention, and I managed to open an eye a bit. “What?” I breathed, glad the pain had eased. No one should die in pain. The blessing of angels.
Trent looked worried, a smear of blood on his face. I almost smiled. He was worried about me.
He grimaced, and my vision narrowed to almost nothing. “Hold on,” he said, his voice sounding like he was in cotton. “I have to set you down for a second. I’ll be right back.”
The beautiful haze I was in vanished and agony split between my thought and reason. I gasped as he shifted me to the floor. He was leaving, and my heart thudded wildly. Eyes open, I frantically looked for him, seeing Bis staring down at me, his eyes as big as saucers. His wings and ears were pinned back. His tail was wrapped around his clawed feet, and he was as black as midnight, scared to death. I smiled at him, and he turned to Trent, fear in his eyes.
“Mr. Kalamack!” he exclaimed, and then Trent was back, frowning as he knelt beside me. I could feel his aura, and I wanted to roll into it, but I couldn’t make anything move.
“Foolish witch,” Trent was muttering as he kneeled by me. There was a little cap on his head, and he was arranging a thin ribbon to drape around his neck and down his front. He was wearing an odd shirt, red in front, white in back—very unlike him. And then I realized it wasn’t red—it was soaked in my blood. “Why didn’t you just give him the curse and banish him?” he finished.
“I did.” My hand stretched out, and though it burned as if a dog was chewing on it, I managed to edge it into his aura. Bliss slipped into my fingers, and I started to cry. I wanted it, and it was so close, smelling of cinnamon and the shadows under trees. “He dragged me into a line with him,” I said, the tears burning me. “He was eating my soul.” Pick me up. Oh God, just pick me up again.
“That would account for its shredded look.”
The soggy warmth under me was getting cold, and I moaned in relief as Trent gathered me back to him, pulling me into his lap and setting my back to his front, almost covering my entire body with his aura. My eyes opened a bit, and I felt my heart slowing as his aura lapped about me. He was reading from something, his lips moving. I could feel elven magic seeping out of the earth and into me, but it didn’t matter. It was too late.
“What did you want to be when you grew up?” I asked. We were innocent once. How could it have gone so bad?
Trent’s attention flicked to me, his worried frown becoming one of shock. “A tailor. They were the only men who could order my father around. Rachel, listen to me.”
“I think I’m dying,” I whispered, and Trent shifted my weight closer to him.
“You are,” he said, no emotion at all in his words.
Heavy and hot, the tears slid down my face. “I know,” I said. For all the agony, for all the heartache, I wasn’t ready to go yet. But I couldn’t stop it. There was just nothing left to hold me together. Trent’s aura wasn’t enough.
“I’m sorry,” Trent was saying, but I wasn’t really listening, I was trying to blink the tears away enough so that I could see the wind moving the fabric of the sun shelter hanging between me and the sky. “I can’t fix you. Not like this. Your soul isn’t sending out enough of an aura to convince your mind that you are still alive, and mine isn’t making enough of an impression. Your body is shutting down.”
“Yeah, I know,” I said breathily, staring up at the blue and white. My God, it was beautiful, those colors up there.
Bis was crying, I could hear him, and I pulled my attention from the sky, wanting to tell him it was okay. My gaze found Trent’s instead, and he grimaced, grabbing my chin with a hand and forcing me to look at him when my focus slid away. “Pay attention,” he said, and I thought it rather rude. “I’m going to put your soul in a bottle until it heals.”
Bis’s sobs hesitated, and I blinked. With that little hat and ribbon around his neck, he looked vulnerable and scholarly. Like a priest and a rabbi all mixed up and all the better for it. It was kind of cute. “Whhaaat?” I slurred, and then fear hit me as his words took on meaning. He wanted to put my soul in a bottle. Like the one Al had. The soul had been in there so long, it had gone insane. Elves could do that, too? Why not? They would have to be smart to survive a war with the demons, even if they were almost extinct. The demons were on the verge of extinction themselves.
Trent turned away, watching his hand as he dumped the milk out of a nearby baby bottle. His head lifted as the door opened. Someone gasped, and Trent’s lips pressed into a thin line. “Get out!” he shouted, then, “Wait! Call 911. Tell them she’s gone into cardiac arrest and isn’t breathing.”
“Yes, sir,” the cool, masculine voice said, and the door shut. A baby was crying in the distance. Or maybe that was me. At least the burning had stopped. I couldn’t feel a thing.
“But I’m still breathing,” I said. It was taking forever for anything to make sense.
I winced as Trent shifted me farther up into his arms so he could see the little book he was holding in front of us. “You won’t be in a minute,” he said, and Bis took a breath in alarm. “As soon as your soul leaves it, your body is going to shut down.”
I thought about that as Trent started to hum, the sound going deep into my psyche and setting my blood to slow. Elven magic stirred, rising like fog in a dusky meadow, tingling and heavy. It didn’t hurt like the ley lines did, and my muscles grew slack. Suddenly my eyes opened wide. “You’re going to kill me!” I exclaimed, and the magic faltered as Trent’s humming cut off.
“I’ll keep it alive. Get it on life support. Your soul needs to regain its strength. It can do that in a bottle, and when it does, I’ll put it back in.”
He began humming again, rockin
g me. The prick of wild magic tingled across me, heady and slow. Until a thought pinged against the muzzy softness and shredded it into pinpricks. “You can do that?” I asked, and the magic broke. “You want to put me in a baby bottle?”
The humming stopped. “You’re going to have to trust me. I’ve been practicing this, but I need your consent. I’m not good enough to do this without it.”
I blinked up at him, trying to understand. My breath came in and out, and Trent waited, impatience in his eyes. “How many times have you done this?” I asked.
“And had it work? Never. But I’ve only tried it with birds, and they are rather stupid. Be quiet. I’ve got to concentrate.”
I felt like I was floating. “You want my permission to kill me?”
He sighed, and Bis shifted his wings nervously. “Yes,” Trent said.
I was numb, his magic already having taken hold. It was either that or I was dying in his arms. “Okay,” I said, closing my eyes, and he sighed again, but it was different—as if he finally believed I trusted him. The world got spongy and black as the humming evolved into words I couldn’t understand, the vowels deep in his throat and the pitch rising and falling in unexpected beauty. It was the wind in the leaves given voice, and the movement of the stars in the heavens, and I started to cry again as I remembered the elf under the arch singing me to sleep.
“Tislan, tislan. Ta na shay, cooreen na da,” he sang, the words circling, going around and around in my head, pulling energy into existence from his soul, not a ley line, and giving my thoughts something to hide behind from the pain. His voice coated me in soothing darkness. My heart slowed until it decided to stop, but I didn’t care. I didn’t hurt anymore, and Trent’s aura was warm.
So very warm.
Thirty-one
I looked at my hands as they pressed the cookie cutter into the dough, realizing that I’d been making cookies for quite a while—but not consciously aware of it. It was as if I’d been sleepwalking. Maybe I still was. A pleasant sense of lassitude lay heavily on me, and I used a pancake turner to carefully set the cut cookie, smelling like milk, onto the baking tray. I was making trees, but it didn’t feel like the solstice. It was too warm.
Setting the cutter down, I shifted a second cookie to the tray, then hesitated. The one I’d just put there was gone. My head came up, and I calmly looked at the sink. The light beyond the window was too bright to see anything. The ceiling, too, was a hazy white, as well as the floor. I didn’t see my feet down there, but it didn’t bother me.
“How odd,” I said, going to look out the window, but it was as if the sun had washed out the world. I turned, unafraid as I realized that the wall against which Ivy had her big farm table pushed was gone, too. The table was there, but the wall was a hazy white mist.
That didn’t bother me, either. It had been like that for a long time—I’d just now noticed, was all. Even the sight of the unmarked circle of cookie dough and the empty cookie tray was okay. I’d been making cookies forever. Unconcerned, I went to the center counter and cut out another. It didn’t matter.
I hummed as I moved cookies to an empty tray, the same tune going around and around in my head. Ta na shay, cooreen na da. It spun over and over, and I moved to it, feeling good with it in my head. I didn’t know what it meant, but it didn’t hurt, and not hurting was good.
It was awfully quiet for my kitchen, though, so often full of pixy chatter, and after setting another cookie on the empty tray, I looked back at the hazy wall. There was a dark spot on it, about eight inches tall, a few inches wide, at chest height. I squinted, trying to decide if it was getting closer.
Kisten? I thought, and it took on a masculine outline, wavering like a heat mirage, but the shoulders weren’t broad enough for him.
Maybe it was Jenks? But there was no sparkle of pixy dust. And besides, Jenks wasn’t that tall. The figure’s arms moved as it paced forward, becoming my size. Taking on a sudden flash of color, it stepped into my kitchen.
“Trent?” I said in surprise as he shook off the mist, looking refreshed and collected in a pair of black slacks and a lightweight short-sleeved shirt, clean and bright and well pressed.
“Not really,” he said, and I wiped the flour from my hands on an apron I hadn’t realized I was wearing. “Well, sort of?” he amended, then shrugged. “You tell me. I’m your subconscious.”
My lips parted, and I looked again at the floor that wasn’t there and the ceiling that wasn’t there, either. “You put my soul in a bottle,” I said, surprised I wasn’t scared.
Trent sat on Ivy’s table and leaned forward to snatch a bit of cookie dough from the perfect circle waiting to be cut. “I didn’t. I’m just a figment of your imagination. Your mind, not me, is creating all of this to cushion itself.”
Frowning, I focused on him. “So I could imagine Ivy standing there instead?” I said, thinking of her, and Trent chuckled, licking the last of the sweetness from his fingers.
“No. Trent is trying to reach you. That’s why I’m here. Bits of him are getting through, just not enough.”
But I already knew that, seeing as he was simply a part of my subconscious, voicing what I was figuring out the instant I was realizing it. It was a weird way to have a conversation.
Trent slid from the table and came around to me. His hands were outstretched, and I backed up when he got too close. “What the hell are you doing?” I said, giving him a shove, and Trent rocked back, his arms dropping.
“Trying to kiss you,” he said.
“Why?” I said, peeved. God, dreams were weird.
“Trent is trying to get your soul back in your body,” Trent said, looking mildly embarrassed. “He can’t do it unless you agree.”
Oh yeah. Elven magic. It worked by persuasion and trickery. Sounded about right. “And a kiss is the only way to show agreement?” I mocked, putting the center counter between us. The floor had shown up, looking faded and scratched. My soul was starting to put things together. “Hey, how long have I been in here?” I asked, and Trent shrugged. Apparently my subconscious didn’t know.
Looking unconcerned, Trent picked up the cookie cutter. “You want to leave, right?”
I eyed him standing in my kitchen, and I wondered if he really looked that good or if my subconscious was adding to his sex appeal. “Yes,” I said, coming closer.
He handed me the spatula. “We have to work together.”
I figured he meant more than making cookies, but I slid the spatula under the cut dough and moved it to the tray. “I want to leave. Isn’t that enough?”
A second cookie joined the first, and my eyebrows rose. The first one hadn’t vanished this time. “Now you’re getting it,” Trent said, then seemed to shudder. “You’ve been in here three days,” he said, his visage losing its clean, pressed look and becoming haggard. His hand working the cookie cutter was swollen, and he was missing two digits on his right hand, a very white bandage hiding the damage. I hadn’t imagined him looking like that. It was something outside—impinging on me.
“Trent?” I said, backing up in alarm, and his posture slumped. His eyes were red rimmed and tired, and his hair was limp and straggly. He was still wearing his black slacks and black shirt, but they were wrinkled, as if he’d been wearing them for days.
“Yes,” he said, his gaze rising to the ceiling. “It’s me.”
I didn’t think I was talking to my subconscious anymore, and I set the spatula down, my alarm turned into fear. “What’s happening?”
His eyes landed on me, and I clasped my arms around my middle. “I’m trying to get you out, but I’ve run into an unexpected snag.”
“You said you could do this!” I exclaimed, and he took a breath, his expression a mix of irritation and embarrassment. “Oh my God, is my body dead?” I squeaked, and he shook his head, raising a hand in protest.
“Your body is fine,” he said, looking at his hand and the missing digits. “It’s in a private room and I’m sitting right next to it. It’s j
ust…”
My foreboding grew deeper. “What?” I said flatly.
He looked up, grimacing as if in distaste. “It’s a very old charm,” he said. “I didn’t have much choice. You were dying. All I had with me was one very stressed young gargoyle and the ancient texts I’d been playing with. I’ve been studying them for the last six months, trying to find the truth in the, uh, fairy tale.”
“What is the problem, Trent?” I said. I could smell him now, sort of a sour wine, maybe vinegar scent.
“Ah, I think it would help if you kissed me,” he said, not embarrassed, but irritated.
I dropped back a step. “Excuse me?”
He turned away and cut out another cookie. “You know…the kiss that breaks the spell and wakes the, uh, girl? It’s elven magic. There’s no figuring these things out.”
“Whoa! Hold up!” I exclaimed as it suddenly made sense. “You mean like love’s first kiss? That isn’t going to happen! I don’t love you!”
He frowned, seeing that the cookie he had moved onto the tray had vanished. The two I’d placed were still there, though. “It doesn’t have to be love’s first kiss,” he said. “That was someone trying to write a good story. But it does have to be an honest one.” Almost angry, he spun back to me, the pancake turner in his new, awkward grip. “My God, Rachel. Am I so distasteful to you that you can’t tolerate one kiss to save your life?”
“No,” I said, taken aback. “But I don’t love you, and I couldn’t fake that.” Did I? No, I didn’t. I was really sure about that.
He took a breath and held it as he thought about that for all of three seconds. “Good,” he said, handing me the spatula. “Good. So if you just kiss me, we can get you out of here.”
I took the spatula as he held it out, edging closer to move a third cookie to the tray. “Kiss you, huh?” I said, and he sighed.