Black Magic Sanction th-8

by Kim Harrison

  "Rachel?" came a worried call from the door, and I looked up from the bit of ash that was left of my hair. That and a really nasty stench.

  "I'm fine!" I called back. "Just getting rid of potential focusing objects."

  I heard his pleased mmmm, then his steps retreated. I ran the water a long time, cleaning the basin until there was not even a hint of ash. Forcing a smile, I came out to find Pierce at the stove. "Nick said there were eggs," he said, making an odd picture of domesticity as he turned with a spatula in his hand, "but I was of the mind you'd prefer hotcakes."

  A splatter of batter marked his shirt, and my smile became real. Eggs gave me migraines, but there wasn't enough of them in pancakes to matter. "Fabulous," I said as I took one of the cups of coffee waiting on the faded table. "Is this mine?" I asked, and he nodded, expertly flipping the pancake to land back in the pan.

  Three pancakes were already waiting in the oven, their scent covering up the reek of burning hair. "I've never made coffee before," he said, repositioning the pancake in the pan. "Not in that fashion. But I've seen you do it enough. Is it... okay?"

  I took a sip, grinning as I remembered his drinking my mom's too-strong coffee in an effort to impress me the night we'd met. "It's good. Thanks. You've got batter on your shirt."

  Pierce looked down, dropping everything with a mild oath and dabbing at it with the damp corner of a dish towel. There was no maple syrup in the microwave, but a bottle of corn syrup was warming in a pan on the stove. The table, too, was set, so as Pierce fussed over his shirt, I went to Nick's dresser, wondering what he'd shoved in it before he left.

  Another mild cuss word drifted through the apartment, and Pierce gave up on the spot. "Do you trust him?" he asked, knowing what I was thinking as I stood before Nick's dresser.

  My jaw clenched, and my head started to pound. "Not where it counts."

  "Then look."

  Why not? I set my mug down and opened the drawer. Lying atop Nick's socks and tighty whities was my splat gun. "Hey!" I exclaimed, reaching for it only to curl my fingers under before they could touch it. "It's my splat gun," I said, face burning. He must have lifted it from Vivian in Junior's coffeehouse, but why hadn't he returned it to me?

  Pierce leaned from the stove to see me. "Testing you? To see if you're trustworthy?"

  Either that, or he wanted it for himself. "I guess I just got an F, then," I said, hefting my splat gun before I jammed it at the small of my back where it made an uncomfortable bump. Under the gun was a handful of ticket stubs, receipts, and handwritten notes on napkins. I peered closer, spotting a day pass to the zoo's off-hours runners' program. With a finger, I shifted a few things, not seeing a pattern to it—apart from everything being from places I frequented. "He's been watching me," I said, figuring it out. "Not lately," I added, seeing the dates, "but he has."

  The oven opened, and I heard a plate scrape on the faded table. "Come and eat while it's warm," he called, sounding angry but willing to let me handle it.

  Jaw clenched, I picked the bits of my life out from between his socks and dropped them on the dresser. I was taking the gun. I may as well let him know I looked at everything. Slamming the drawer shut, I stomped to the table and sat down, exhaling to get rid of my tension. The gun was uncomfortable, and I put it on the table, not caring if it looked funny next to the domesticity of plates and pancakes.

  "Don't worry about it," I said as I put my napkin on my lap. I couldn't meet his eyes as I poured the corn syrup over the very brown, almost burnt, pancakes. They were kind of tough to cut with my fork, but when I took a bite... "Hey, these are good," I said, feeling the different texture on my tongue. "This isn't from a box."

  Pierce smiled as he sat across from me. "No. The fixings were here. Nick has more than eggs and beer, though he might know naught about what to do with them. I've made a feast on less than he has in his icebox. Uh, fridge," he amended, frowning.

  He saw me look at the patch of skin at his neckline, and his smile deepened, becoming almost devilish, which for some reason made me flush. I'd seen him naked in the snow at Fountain Square; why this little bit of skin was so eye catching was beyond me. God! I was not going to do this. Pierce was off-limits. End of story. Not going to happen. Blow the ship up and maroon the crew on Celibate Island.

  Pulling the plate closer, I started shoveling it in, the clicks of my fork mixing with the ticking of the four clocks. I glanced at one like Cinderella, wondering if I was going to be jerked across the continent when the sun fell below the West Coast horizon. True, Nick was here—unless he'd hopped a plane back to San Francisco—but lots of people knew Al's summoning name. The council had deep pockets. Not to mention an island full of demon summoners. Dangle a get-out-of-jail-free card in Alcatraz, and I bet someone would jump at it.

  My chewing slowed, and elbow on the table, I eyed Pierce past my hanging fork, worried. This wouldn't be a problem if I could line jump. "How hard is it to travel the lines?" I asked him, and he sighed. "Give me a break, okay? I'm tired of being dragged around."

  "I like coming to your rescue," he said. "You're such an independent filly. It does a man good to know he's needed—upon occasion. No. Al said not to teach you."

  "Oh, I thought you did what you wanted?" I said, and he chuckled, knowing I was trying to goad him into it.

  Head cocked, I put down my fork and leaned back with my coffee, a silent statement that I'd not eat any more of his pancakes until he talked to me. My eyes went to the clock on the stove, and back to him. Newt had said it took a long time to learn, and apparently a gargoyle was involved. "Bis said you used him to hear the lines," I prompted.

  Pierce's smile faded, and he eyed me from around the loose curls hanging in his eyes. "You're going to get me in trouble with Al," he muttered, gaze dropping.

  "So? You got me in trouble with him. Teach me," I dared him.

  "I can't," he said as he hid behind a sip of coffee. "Only a gargoyle can teach you how to listen to the lines, and none has the learning anymore."

  Listen? That was curious. "You taught Bis in a day," I prompted.

  He didn't even look up from shoving food in his mouth. "Bis is a gargoyle. If you could see ley lines in your mind, you could master it in a day as well."

  Stymied, I fiddled with my fork. "Fine. I'll ask Bis the next time I see him."

  Alarm made Pierce tense. "He's not skilled enough to teach you. He's a baby."

  "Nice of you to notice. That didn't seem to bother you when you used him to find me."

  Grimacing, Pierce set his fork down. "I know how to jump, Rachel," he said, a touch of irritation in his voice. "Bis was safe with me. A very old gargoyle taught me before she made a die of it. I think she only taught me because she knew she wouldn't last the winter. And before you go climbing any steeples, demons killed every last free gargoyle who retained the knowledge of line jumping when the elves migrated to reality."

  "That's convenient," I said, and his brow furrowed.

  "No, that's a fact. The only reason the gargoyle who taught me survived was because they thought she was too young to know."

  He was starting to look angry, and I wedged a triangle of pancake free. They were too good to boycott. "You could try to teach me," I said, pitching my voice high.

  Pierce glanced up and down, making a little huff of amusement. "I'll allow you're smart as a steel trap, but it's not book learning, it's learning on one's own hook that gets you there and back. And for that, you need a gargoyle. An experienced one."

  Peeved, I stared at him, waiting. Pierce ate three forkfuls, each one getting a harder stab than the one before. My foot began to bob.

  Making a rude noise, Pierce pushed his plate aside. "It takes a body a year of line theory to even hope—"

  "So give me the basics," I interrupted. "Something to chew on. Al won't object to that. I mean, you're not teaching me anything. Just talking shop."

  Taking a slow breath, Pierce brought his coffee into his hands, holding it to warm his f
ingers as he gathered his thoughts. "I've heard it said that a body would do well to think of time much like a stream, and we are flotsam, buoyed along," he finally said, and a surge of anticipation brought me straight up in my chair.

  "Got it," I said as I stuffed another triangle in my mouth. "Next big idea," I mumbled.

  Pierce's eyebrows rose. "Now you're being evil," he accused, and when I smiled and shrugged, he took a last bite from his plate. "The ever-after is said to have found its beginning when a considerable calamity struck across time, splashing a chance amount over the banks, as it were." He hesitated; then as if I wouldn't believe him, he added, "It's not really a bank, more like a straw, the insides held within it by the same fixative that holds the stars to the heavens."

  I scrunched my face up, trying to put that into modern terms. "Uh, gravity?" I guessed, then added, "What makes things fall down but keeps the moon up?"

  His eyes going wide, Pierce blinked at me. "To put it in a pie, yes. It's gravity, and a potency I'm constrained to call... sound?"

  I licked corn syrup off my finger, wondering how sound had anything to do with gravity, space, or anything.

  "Old sound?" Pierce tried again. "The word of God, some say."

  Word of God. Old sound. I'm not getting this. "Oh!" I exclaimed, brightening. "Sound! Like the big bang that started the universe!"

  "Explosions have naught to do with it," he said quizzically, but I waved my fork at him.

  "Some people think the universe started with a big explosion," I said. "And everything is still moving away from it. They say space is still ringing from the bang like a big bell, but we're so small we can't hear it. Like us not being able to hear all the sounds elephants make."

  He didn't look convinced. "Do tell. Students of the arcane, ah, some people believe that such drops of time that are flung near enough slip back like water drops, leaving a body with the sensation of deja vu, but if they are large enough and are flung far enough apace, they're constrained to dry up and vanish, leaving unexplained lost civilizations."

  His eyes were alight. I'd seen that look on college students debating such ridiculous stuff as how the world would be today if Napoleon hadn't stirred that misaligned spell and won Waterloo, or if the Turn had never happened and we'd gone to the moon instead. "Okay, I got that," I said, and Pierce pushed from the table to take his plate to the sink.

  "Are you sure?" he asked as he worked the taps and squirted soap into the empty batter bowl. He must have seen Ivy and me do it a hundred times.

  "I saw a movie about it once," I said, and he turned to me, eyebrows high.

  "You are a clever woman, Rachel, but I'm not sure you comprehend the complexity," he offered over the sound of running water. But at my frown, he cautiously took my empty plate as I extended it and continued. "The ever-after is believed to have its origins in such a calamity," he said as he rolled up his sleeves to show nicely muscled arms, darker than that spot of skin at his throat. "It was orchestrated by the demons to kill the majority of the elven population during their yearly gathering. An almighty span of time was spelled from its course, landing it too far to rejoin yet being so considerable that it didn't vanish straight on, lingering enough such that the no-account makers of the curse could return full chisel to reality, leaving the elves to make a most horrible die of it."

  "Demons," I said, and Pierce nodded. Demons and elves. Why did it always come back to them fighting their stupid war?

  "Demons," Pierce agreed. "Upon banishing the elves, they flung themselves back to reality, their tracks scarring time and making ley lines."

  "Demons made the ley lines?" I interrupted, surprised, and he nodded.

  "And such was their downfall, for not only did the lines continue to funnel potency, ah, energy, into the ever-after and keep it from vanishing, as they had schemed, but it also fixed the demons to the very place they sought to escape. I'll allow the elves must have rejoiced for their continuing lives, even banished as they were, until the sun rose and the same demons who'd cursed them were flung back, trapping all together in an almighty wrathy state."

  "Until the elves learned how to travel the lines and come home," I said, my eyes rising to his. "Witches learned to do it first, though." And then demons killed all the gargoyles who knew so no one could travel the lines but them.

  Pierce turned from me to wash the plates with careful attention. "A reasonable truth when a body knows the secret of our origin," he said, reminding me that he was one of the few people to know. "Demons created the ever-after and are slung back to it when the sun rises."

  "Jenks can't stay in the ever-after after sunup," I said, taking up my cup and warming my hands around it. "He popped right out. And when I was in the ever-after, it felt like the lines were running from the ever-after to reality."

  Pierce set the rinsed plates in the dry sink. "Perhaps because pixies are of such a small stature. I've not the learning, uh, I don't know. The lines flow like tides. When the sun is down, ever-after flows into reality, allowing demons to visit. When the sun is up, reality flows into the ever-after, pulling them back. It's the tides that make a caution of their realm."

  I thought about that, remembering the broken buildings. Standing, I started pulling drawers open to hunt for a drying towel. "So ley lines are the paths the demons took to return to reality that first time, and they flow back and forth like tides, trashing the place."

  "You have it like a book!" Pierce said, clearly pleased. "The entirety of the ever-after is pulled behind us like a man hanging behind a runaway horse, fixed fast by the ley lines."

  "So how do you travel them?" I asked as I dried a plate, remembering what all this history was supposed to lead up to. He hesitated, and I added, "I want to know, even if it's just theory. I won't tell Al you told me. Give me some credit, will you?"

  Hands dripping suds, he squinted as if in pain, and I added, "I'm going to need something to think about in Alcatraz besides your stunning Latin syntax, okay?"

  Emotion drained from his face. "You won't get there. I'll not allow it," he said, his soapy hands suddenly on my shoulders. "With Bis's help, I can find you, follow you anywhere."

  My impulse to pull away vanished. As I stood there, my shoulders became damp. I searched his expression, too jaded to believe in white knights. Happy endings were never handed out. You had to fight for them, earn them with bruised hearts and sacrifices. And I just couldn't do it right now. It hurt too much when it fell apart. "Don't make me promises," I whispered, and the earnest glow in his eyes tarnished.

  Head down, I ducked out from his hands, going to the table and recapping the corn syrup as if nothing had happened, but my shoulders were cold, making it feel as if he was touching me still. I couldn't let myself like him. It was too stupid to think about.

  "Look, I've traveled by ley lines a lot," I persisted, wanting to change the subject. "I can even hold myself together without help. Al hasn't had to keep my soul from going all over the continent for weeks. Can you at least tell me how gargoyles fit into it?"

  His head down, Pierce returned to the sink and dumped the pan of sudsy water.

  "Oh, come on!" I cajoled as I slid the corn syrup in next to the cornflakes and shut the door hard. Why does Nick have six bottles of corn syrup? "I won't tell Al!"

  Still Pierce said nothing as he rinsed the dishpan and put it away damp. He was frowning when he turned back, and upon seeing my arms over my chest, he held up his hands in surrender. "Holding your soul together is but a small part," he said, and I made a satisfied huff, turning to dry the silverware. "To put it all on one stick, you need to shift your aura to match a ley line."

  I pulled three drawers open looking for the silverware, dropping it in when I found it. There was no order, just everything all jumbled together in an otherwise empty drawer. Ivy would have an OCD moment. "I didn't know you could do that," I said. "Shift your aura. What, like make it a different color?"

  "No. Color shifts slowly with our experiences, but the sound it mak
es is... flexible."

  I bumped the drawer shut with my hip, turning. "Auras make sounds?" I questioned.

  "Apparently," he said sourly. "Mine never says anything that I can hear."

  I smiled, relaxing at the drop in tension. "How can you change something you can't even hear?" I complained. "It's like teaching a deaf woman how to speak immaculately."

  "That," Pierce said as he put the plates away, "is an almighty fine comparison. And why it takes a gargoyle to teach you. You need to know what sound your aura needs to be, and gargoyles are the only creatures that can hear auras and ley lines both."

  I leaned back against the kitchen counter, wondering if this was as close to a normal life as I'd ever get: a few hours in someone else's apartment, cleaning up after breakfast and talking shop with a man who had been dead for a hundred and fifty years. But dead no longer.

  "Bis can hear auras," I stated, and Pierce took the dishcloth from me, drawing it through my fingers. "So if I want to use the ley lines like a demon and go back and forth, all I have to do is learn how to make my aura sound right?"

  He nodded. "Death on," he said, his eyes fixed to mine. "When Al totes you in a line, he first changes the sound of your aura until it's consistent with that of the nearest ley line. That draws you into it. You settle somewhere else by making your aura sound like the line you wish to be in. A body's soul will find itself there most quick, and from there, you allow your aura to return to its normal sound to push you from the line back into reality. Demons can't hear the lines, nor can witches or elves or pixies, but with practice they can learn to shift their auras. "

  "And you."

  He inclined his head. "And me. Because I studied on it. Most diligently. It is one of the reasons the coven branded me black, saying it's a demon art because it makes your aura smutty. But, Rachel, it's not evil. Bis is neither cursed nor smut-ridden because he can travel the lines."

  "You're preaching to the choir here, Pierce," I said, watching him dry his fingers. "So, assuming I go along with this and Bis can tell me how to shift my aura, how do you do it?"