Ever After th-11

by Kim Harrison

  “No, I mean you! You’re standing there, looking at me as if we just came out of that hole in the ground in Trent’s woods. I can’t do this! I can’t ask you to help me when you think there might be a chance that someday . . .”

  My words cut off. I was helpless to continue. Head shaking ruefully, he took my hand back in his own. “I know when I’ve been given the shrug,” he said, tilting his head to keep me quiet when I rushed to explain. “You did well by me, and we both turned our attentions elsewhere. I’d be a cad to expect you to think of me as anything other than fondly. But a man can’t help but remember. Now, hold the aura as it is and shift it to orange. What is needed of the red will remain within the charm. Easy now. If you can do this, then you can do the rest.”

  “Thank you,” I breathed, hanging my head and closing my eyes because I couldn’t bear to look at him anymore. Orange, I thought, shifting my aura as Bis and I had been practicing. This was easier than the melding of colors that we usually did, sitting at an outside café and trying to mimic the auras of people passing by, and Pierce’s grunt of approval was like a wash of hope through me.

  “Now to yellow,” he prompted. “More than before since yellow is so thin to begin with.”

  I knew what he meant, and like hearing a partial chord of a song and knowing what came next, I layered another complexity over the rings, seeing it soak in as the excess orange melted away. The rings were starting to hum, taking on a note all their own.

  “The blues and purples,” he whispered, excitement in his voice. “You are a caution, Rachel. The demon you will be!”

  I almost lost it, but caught myself, concentrating on the feel of his hands around mine as I added the last. Sweat trickled down, and I cracked open an eye at the funny tickle of feeling in my chi. My aura wanted to flood the rings with power, and I held it tight.

  “My God . . .” Pierce breathed. “Easy, Rachel. Hint at a shadow of black. It should have invoked. It needs a harmony of something else, something dark. I’ve never charmed elven silver; it needs something else.”

  I was holding my breath, and I let it out as I turned my aura to an ultraviolet hue. It was as if smut snaked down my arm, but when it hit the rings, it pooled around them, refusing to join.

  And then tiny cracks appeared in the cold, dead metal. Shit.

  “Easy . . .” Pierce whispered as he stared at them. “Let it soak in.”

  My head was starting to hurt, and my arm felt dead. Pinpricks coated it, and I began to shake. The cracks grew, sending spiderwebs of instability through the surface of the rings. Panicked, I froze. There wasn’t enough energy in there yet to rekindle the charm, but any more, and it would break. “Pierce?” I warbled, and his fingers around mine grew warm.

  “I can’t do anything,” he said. “Rachel, you have to finish it!”

  “It’s going to break!” I said. “I can’t hold it!”

  “It’s that damned elven magic,” he said, and I caught my breath when his hands left mine. “Your energy is not mixing with the original maker’s. Can you . . . think elf thoughts?”

  Think elf thoughts, I mocked in my head, but the cracks weren’t going away. I couldn’t stop, and I couldn’t move forward. I knew it would blow them to hell if I just let it go. “Elf thoughts,” I muttered, frowning as I thought of Trent, tricky, proud, arrogant.

  The skin of the rings seemed to shimmer, and I took a quick breath. The cracks were still there, but it felt right. My teeth clenched, and the memory of Trent’s music as he sung my soul to sleep slipped into me, hazy from my subconscious. It was his plea to his goddess that he didn’t believe in to listen, the source of his wild magic. It circled around and around in my head until I felt a somnolent nothing seem to take notice, hesitating in its glorious song, turning one of a thousand eyes to me. Hear me, I thought, begging. See what I’m doing. Lend me your skill.

  Wild magic smiled at me, and the skin of the rings warbled. My last shining of aura reached for the rings, and with a ping of sound that echoed in my soul, the magic vibrated through me and became one. That simple, the rings reinvoked themselves and sealed.

  I gasped, staring at the rings glowing in my palm like glory itself.

  “Well, I’ll be!” Pierce beamed as his protective circle flickered and went out. “You did it! First time out of the box!”

  Elated, I clutched the rings. I had a chance now. I had a chance to fix the line, to free Lucy and Ceri. I looked at the clock on the stove before I remembered where I was. I had to get back to Trent. We had to move on this, and now!

  “Thank you, Pierce, thank you!” I said, pulling him into an expansive hug, my clenched hand with the rings tight to his back. “I couldn’t have done it without you. I can do something now. Thank you!”

  He was smiling when I dropped back, his curls at his forehead damp with the heat, and my expression froze when he touched my hair. “You did it, not me,” he said. “All of it. I only told you how. You never needed me. Even when you were but a young woman.”

  I let go of him, the memory of what lay in his eyes rushing back. “I did,” I said, needing to be honest. “I did need you. I was strong with you. You helped me find that.” Eyes down, I shoved the rings away. “I’m sorry,” I said, knowing it was over, but not remembering why.

  Pierce took a step back to put more space between us. “I demanded too much,” he said, his sadness at himself, not me. “I see in your heart you found someone who makes you strong who does not hold too tight, who has learned that the pain of losing you to fate is more than the pain of you dying in a cage. Who is he?”

  I looked at the clock again. “No one.”

  “Ivy?” he guessed, immediately shaking his head. “No. Someone new? No, someone old,” he said firmly, his eyes going to my pocket. “An elf?” he guessed, then became ashen. “Kalamack?” he blurted, taking my shoulders. “Rachel, no,” he pleaded. “I know I have no right, but he lies. He deceives. It is their nature. This is his plan, isn’t it? That you come here, risking yourself instead of him?”

  “It was my plan,” I said, pulling back in anger. Oh yes, now I remembered why it hadn’t worked. “It was all I could do to make him stay and not follow me here. He would’ve been recognized. I have a right to be here.” I glanced at Newt’s kitchen. “Well, not here, here, but the ever-after. Besides, would you’ve taught him how to invoke the rings?”

  Damn it, he’d made me mad at him again, and I didn’t want to be.

  “He made you think it was your idea.” Pierce pleaded, “Don’t trust him. He’s a Kalamack!”

  “He . . .” I started, not knowing where I was going with my argument. Pierce had said I’d found someone new to love, and Trent wasn’t it, but to say so sounded like I was protesting my way into a bag of truth. “There’s no reason I can’t work with him,” I said belligerently, making a fist to hide Trent’s pinkie ring. “Ku’Sox stole Ceri and his daughter. I can trust his hate.”

  There was a small circle on the floor where I’d popped in, and I stood in it, waiting for his help to get out of here. Nothing like needing an ex-boyfriend to slam your door for you as you make your dramatic exit.

  “But he will spoil you, Rachel,” Pierce said, and I stared until I realized he meant ruin, not overindulge. “He’ll turn your heart hard and you will become as him. A shallow, self-indulgent shell of what you are now. Don’t trust him. Let me help you. I have an arsenal. We can destroy Ku’Sox together. Right now. This very hour. Your strength and my charms. Our magics blend so well. With those rings, we can make a fist of it for sure!”

  I looked him up and down, not surprised. “The rings are not for attack, they’re a safety net for fixing the line. You keep telling me that Trent is going to change me, but you’re the one who keeps trying to get me to kill everyone!”

  “But it needs to be done,” he insisted, and I crossed my arms over my chest.

  “Send me to the mall, please,” I said tightly. “I appreciate your help more than you will ever know.”
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  “Rachel.”

  It was stifling, and I brought my attention down from the ceiling. Pierce stood before me, looking capable and strong, with his curls about him and his eyes promising me success. I remembered how thick his circle had become and imagined the skills he’d been honing since becoming Newt’s familiar. Had she been training him for this? “Can you leave Newt’s rooms without being detected?” I asked, already knowing the answer.

  His head dropped. “No.”

  My posture eased and my anger vanished. “I’m sorry, Pierce,” I said, touching his arm. “You’ll jingle like bells in the forest, and I have to move with stealth. You’ve given me a tool that I didn’t have before. I can do this. Thank you.”

  Jaw tight, he looked up, hearing the truth in it.

  “Do you need anything?” I asked, not wanting to leave like this.

  “Only that which you can’t give. And I will not ask for it.”

  Yep, that’s about what I thought. Sick at heart, I shifted foot to foot. “I have to go.”

  A savage light lit through his eyes, and his chin lifted. “Wait, there is one thing.” Moving close, his expression became almost taunting. “Let me kiss you good-bye, for if fate allows that I see you again, you will not be you anymore.”

  “Pierce . . .” I whispered, but he’d taken both my shoulders and pulled me close. My breath caught, and as our lips touched, he filled my soul with the memory of his love. Tears warmed my eyes, and I didn’t pull away, wanting just for a moment this perfect spot of what we might have had. Our auras, already sensitized to each other, mixed with swirls of pinpricked energy, sparking over our skin as our lips moved against each other, and his hands pressed into me with the memory of what had been.

  Slowly he let go, and I wiped my eyes with the back of my hand, not ashamed for my tears. I could have loved him, but he demanded too much.

  “I’m not going to change,” I said, meaning several things at once.

  Chin high, he let go and stepped back. “Elves are more evil than demons. They warp you to suit their needs and make you think it was your idea. You will always be in my heart, Rachel Morgan. Go, before my foul jailer comes back.”

  “Pierce.”

  He turned away and gestured. “Go.”

  I vanished, seeing him standing in a spot of sunlight that never moved, alone and apart, but wanting more.

  I am not becoming Trent’s tool, I thought as I misted back into existence at the fountain and the trite sound of synthesizers and cheerful lyrics beat on me. I was making my own decisions, not Trent’s. Pierce was seeing the world through ancient glasses.

  But as I pushed past the few meandering demons in search of the coffeehouse, I couldn’t dispel a faint whisper of warning.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Cool and carrying the hint of rain, the night wind pushed against me, sporadically sending my hair to tickle my neck. It brought to me the smell of early lilac and the sound of spring frogs and running water. Far in the distance was the sound of interstate traffic, barely a whisper. Behind me, Loveland Castle loomed dark, empty, and forbidding. Trent’s snazzy black sports car sat parked in the dirt lot. My car was still at his gatehouse. The light from the camp lantern on the retaining wall behind me barely made it to the surrounding forest stretching around us—just far enough to make the place feel creepy.

  Edgy, I shifted my feet into the gravelly scree of the lower garden path as I stood in the glow of the lantern, my hands on my hips and Bis on the crumbling retaining wall behind me. Four feet tall, it almost put him eye to eye with me. Together we looked across the tall grass at the damaged ley line stretching across the lower, long-fallow garden and waited for Jenks and Trent to return.

  The ley line looked ugly with my second sight, worse in the lamp’s glow than it had in the sun, with violet-purple streamers coming from the line to soak up the energy leaking through. But for all its nasty appearance, I was sure the line itself was fine apart from the original leak. Ku’Sox had moved all the minuscule imbalances from the other lines, concentrating them in mine to make an event horizon. It was an event, all right. The last one the demons would ever see.

  I shivered despite the night’s warmth, and Bis tightened his grip on the retaining wall, making the stones crack. I didn’t want to let the little guy know how nervous I was, but it was hard with him so close. Trent’s rings were in my pocket. I had refused to give them to him when I’d come back through the vault, afraid he’d come out here with Quen and do something stupid. Quen wasn’t up to magic yet, and it had taken both of us to convince the man to stay with Ray tonight lest Ellasbeth take her to the West Coast for her own hostage demands.

  Trent was helping Jenks canvass the nearby area for pixy intel, but I still felt naked knowing that Al wouldn’t be able to save my butt if Ku’Sox showed. For the first time, I was really on my own. “Well?” I whispered to Bis, wishing they would hurry up. “What do you think?”

  Bis shifted his clawed hind feet and bits of rock pattered down. “It hurts,” he said, simply, ears pinned to his skull. Depressed, I went to sit on the stone wall beside him, scooting myself up until my feet hung above the lower path.

  “But do you think we can separate the imbalances?”

  He shrugged, looking lost as his ears perked up. I was asking a lot, and I edged closer, rocks pinching me. “Let me hear,” I said, touching his foot so I could feel the lines resonate.

  My teeth clenched as suddenly every single ley line within my reach sung inside my head. It was a heady experience—and why I usually had a bubble of protection around my thoughts when I touched Bis. This time, though, the harsh discord of my nearby ley line cut through the beauty, making my teeth ache and my head hurt.

  “My God!” I said as I let go of him and stared at the line with my second sight. “How can you stand it?” And how am I going to separate anything from that noise?

  The cat-size gargoyle shrugged, touching his wingtips together over his head. “I don’t have a choice. Everyone is tired of listening to it. I’ve been told to fix it, and fix it now.”

  My thoughts zinged back to the three gargoyles I’d seen tonight before we’d left, perched on the roof of the church and spitting at the pixies to keep them out of earshot as they talked in low rumbles. I would’ve gone up into the belfry to eavesdrop, but I was afraid they might take Bis and move to another church. “You!” I said, surprised. “But it’s my line!”

  His red eyes glowed eerily in the lantern’s light. “And I’m responsible for you having made it.”

  “Bis, this isn’t your fault. Neither is Ku’Sox exploiting the tear to try to break the ever-after. Even if you hadn’t left me, I would have scraped that hole trying to get out.” I clutched my arms around myself, cold as I remembered it. I might have managed to jump the lines, but I’d damaged my aura and scraped a hole in reality in the process.

  “But I left you,” he said, unable to look at me.

  Smiling, I bubbled my thoughts and touched his shoulder. “It was my fault, not yours, for trying to jump a line before I knew what I was doing.”

  He was silent, and I gave his shoulder a squeeze before letting go. I knew he still blamed himself. He’d changed a lot since then, waking up in the day for brief periods, becoming more somber, less prone to playing tricks on the pixies. He was getting older, and I worried that I’d brought an end to his childhood before its time. “Is this why there have been gargoyles on the roof with you?” I asked, not sure how much he’d be willing to tell me.

  Immediately Bis brightened. “They’re teaching me the vibrations of their lines,” he said proudly. “Usually a gargoyle is taught by only one other gargoyle, but the lines aren’t acting right, so they’re taking turns by singing me only their line, the one they know by heart.”

  “D-demons?” I stammered. “You’ve been talking to demon-bound gargoyles?”

  He nodded, almost going invisible as he flushed a deep black to make his red eyes stand out. “They’re trying t
o teach me all the lines so that I can teach them to you. I only know a few, since most won’t leave the ever-after and their demons. They want me to come to them.”

  He dropped his eyes, scared of the idea, and I frowned. “The lines aren’t acting right,” he said, clawed feet shifting as he looked at the line. “Demons aren’t jumping on their own at all. Everyone needs their gargoyle, like they’re brand-new to line jumping.”

  Remembering my jump from the mall to Newt’s kitchen, I nodded. “They’re teaching you line jumping,” I said, and he grinned, a glint of light showing on his thick black teeth.

  “Yup.”

  I looked at the line, then him. “So you know what some of the lines sound like?

  He nodded, making a face. “I know what they’re supposed to sound like. They’re off.”

  “Because their imbalances are here in my line . . .” Fingers tapping the cold stone, I thought that over. “Bis, if you know what they’re supposed to sound like and you can hear what they sound like now, then maybe I can find what’s missing in my line here and shift it back. It’s the misplaced imbalance that’s causing the trouble.”

  Bis’s eyes blinked slowly. “Maybe that’s what they were talking about,” he said, his heavy brow furrowing. “Pigeon poop, Rachel. Talking to those old gars is like talking to crazy old men. They never come out and tell you what they mean. Everything is spoons and two-legged chairs. What does a spoon have to do with a ley line? I don’t know! Do you?”

  Clearly he was frustrated. I could sympathize, having listened to enough wise-old-man crap to fill a wheelbarrow. “No,” I admitted, “but if we can separate even one imbalance and put it back, it might make a big difference in the leak. Buy us some more time.”

  “Or Ku’Sox might show up,” Bis said.

  True. I exhaled heavily and turned in a slow circle, looking into the dark for the silver tracing of pixy dust. Jenks should have been back by now; Trent was slowing him down.

  “Sounds kind of hard,” Bis said, the tip of his tail twitching.