Ever After th-11

by Kim Harrison

  Again, the silence stretched. “I’m sorry about Ceri,” Belle said stiffly. “And Pierce.”

  I almost smiled. The three of us had killed most of her clan and left her wingless, but perhaps it made more sense to her with her warrior mind-set. “Thank you, Belle.”

  “They were great warriors. Pierce . . . Jenks tells me you were nearly joined with him.”

  I nodded, bringing up my second sight. Newt’s ley line hung at chest height, a hundred shades of red glowing, mixing, swirling. I desperately wanted to see Pierce there, or even Al. But there was nothing.

  “It would have been a good match. You’re both strong.”

  “Perhaps,” I said softly. I’d thought I had loved him once, but after the shine of his uniqueness had dulled, I’d come to dislike his loose morals more than I had been attracted to his power and dark strength.

  Steadying myself, I reached for my mirror. Reluctantly, slowly, I lifted Rex down and set the heavy glass on my lap instead. I stared into the wine-colored depths in the sunset shadow-light, seeing the roof of the church rising overhead, the steeple distressingly free of Bis. It had been three days. Al should be healed by now.

  “Have Jenks and Ivy summon me if I’m not back in two hours,” I said, and Belle nodded, swinging up onto Rex for her warmth. I shivered in my jacket, feeling as if I was being watched as I took a last look over the sunset-gloomed garden. Gargoyles, I thought.

  My way home settled, I closed my eyes and put my hand on the mirror, hoping he was healed. Al?

  There was only the uncomfortable screeching that the collective had absorbed from the unbalanced line.

  Al, I thought again, hope growing since I hadn’t gotten a do-not-disturb notice. Just no response. Algaliarept.

  My eyes closed as the unholy chaos of the collective dissolved into the rushing sound of water or wind, and I felt the lofty sensation of having doubled my mind. Relief coursed through me, and I took a slow breath, sensing green trees, old and damp. I’d found him. I think.

  In my thoughts, there was a pool of water among the tree roots, only a few inches deep and looking like glass. The air was moist and warm. I could hear water dripping and smell both moss and fog. There was no wind. No grit, no stink of burnt amber. Dancing over the still water were tiny blue butterflies the size of my thumb. It was a forest pool primeval, the light barely making it through the leaves. On the far side of the stone-and-moss-wreathed pool was a black figure hunched and sitting on the largest smooth boulder, his back to me. Al.

  At least . . . I thought it was Al. He didn’t look right. He’s dreaming, I thought, but he must have heard me as he turned, scrabbling to hide whatever he was doing on the rock.

  “Al?” I said in our shared dream, remembering having done this once before. I wasn’t sure it was him. He was thin—almost malnourished, like a fairy—his skin very dark and his hair a tight curl. He stood, and I realized he had leathery wings draped down over his back like a cloak. His eyes were red-slitted goat eyes, but so wide they looked black. I’d never seen him this thin and spindly, the angular sharpness even in his face, narrowing down to a very small pointy chin. He looked like a creature of the air. Alien.

  “Rachel,” he said, his voice the same as I remembered, even if it was a shade embarrassed and deeper than it should be for such a slight frame.

  Nervous, I focused on his eyes. “Are you okay?” Is this what demons originally looked like?

  Apparently not hearing my dream thought, Al turned around to look sadly at the rock he’d been sitting on. “I broke it,” he said. “They can’t leave until I fix him, and if they stay, they’re going to die. They need the sun . . . too.”

  I edged closer, wondering how long this shared dream might last. On the rock was a handful of blue and silver shards as sharp as glass.

  “I’ve been trying to put her back together,” Al said, gesturing, “but the pieces don’t match, no matter how turned.”

  “Oh.” Okay, this was really weird, but no weirder than the last dream we shared about blue butterflies vanishing into the walls of a maze grown from wheat.

  “The edges are torn,” he said, gesturing. “I don’t remember when I broke it.”

  I frowned, bending over the mess. “Look, you’ve got this piece upside down,” I said, then jerked when the shard cut me. A drop of my blood glistened on the silver sliver, and then like magic, the splinters just sort of melted together into a whole, the entire butterfly turning red from my blood to look like stained glass.

  “Some things can’t be fixed,” Al said forlornly as I watched the red butterfly flutter her new wings on the rock and then fly up to join her friends.

  Al didn’t look up from the rock, and I wondered if he was still seeing broken shards where there was now nothing. “Al, you’re dreaming,” I said, and he brought his eyes up to meet mine. There was an uncomfortable innocence in them, and I started to wish I could back up and start again. “Can you bring me over? I need your help.”

  His gaze went to the butterflies dancing up through the canopy, blinking in surprise as he looked back at the empty rock. “Sure,” he said, clearly preoccupied. “Come on over.”

  I gasped in pain as the line took me, hearing Al’s bellow as everything vanished in a flash of white-hot agony. I didn’t understand! It had been three days. He should be healed by now, and I hit the ground hard as reality—or the ever-after, actually—re-formed around me.

  My face plowed into the black marble floor of Al’s spelling kitchen, and my shoulder gave a twinge as I rolled toward the large circular fire pit with its raised benches. “Ow,” I said softly, hearing Al cursing nearby.

  It had been a rough landing, but I was here, and with a renewed hope—and embarrassment—I untangled myself and propped myself up on an elbow. My scrying mirror was lying on the floor, and I scooped it up, checking it for cracks before setting in on the bench. The new, ragged hole in the wall gave me pause, Al’s bedroom looking gray beyond it—a door into the once doorless room. Apparently he’d wanted in before he could jump a line. A pained sound jerked my attention to the small hearth at the front of the room.

  It was lit, and between the shadowy coals and the slate spelling table was a hunched figure on the floor. “Mother pus bucket,” Al groaned, throwing back the blanket he had been wrapped in to scowl at me. “I was asleep!” he yelled, his new black eyes glaring as he held his head. “What do you mean by asking me to jump you over here when I was asleep? The lines are all a bloody hell mess! You can’t jump without a gargoyle assist, or it bloody hell hurts!”

  “Really? I had no idea,” I said as I sat up, wishing my head would stop throbbing. At least he was healed, though, and I cautiously sat on the hearth across from him, recalling that weird batlike image he had had in his dream and wondering if he remembered it. He was in his robe, not surprising me at all. “Sorry,” I said, as he felt his ribs and grimaced. “You okay?”

  “Do I look okay?” he griped, and I couldn’t help my grin. “Why the hell are you laughing! You think this is funny?”

  “No,” I said, unable to stop smiling. “I’m just glad you’re okay.”

  He grumbled under his breath, groaning as he reached for a lump of dirt he then threw onto the fire. The stench of burnt amber grew stronger. “I’m assuming you have a reason to be here,” he said, watching the fire, not me. “Besides wanting to see me in pain.”

  I scooted closer, wondering if the room was indeed smaller. There wasn’t the floor space that I remembered, but maybe the new door would account for it. “I need your help. Dali gave me until Friday to settle with Ku’Sox, but I think he’d rather kill me if he gets the chance.”

  “I can’t imagine why,” he snarled, hunching into his blanket and looking miserable.

  I took a breath. “I can prove Ku’Sox broke my line, but I need—”

  He looked at me as my words cut off in guilt. Oh God. They were elven slavers. He wouldn’t help me. What was I doing here?

  “What do you n
eed . . . Rachel,” he said suspiciously.

  Licking my lips, I tugged my coat closer. It was unusually cold in here. “Ah, I can prove Ku’Sox broke the line by moving all the imbalance at once to the line in the garden and thereby exposing his curse. But I have to keep him off me until someone comes to look, and that won’t happen until I prove I can best him. And to do that, I need help.”

  Al didn’t shift, didn’t make a single indication that he heard me. “Black-souled student thinks she can just come anytime she wants,” he grumped, reaching back to scratch his shoulders under his blanket. “Were you in my dream?”

  “No,” I said, and then when his black-eyed stare fell on me, I amended, “Yes. Al, I’ve got a workable plan. I need help.”

  He sighed, but if it was because I’d seen his dream or that I had a plan he was sure would fail, I didn’t know. “Damn blue butterflies,” he whispered, watching the red sparks drift up the chimney. “They don’t mean anything. Are you hungry?”

  What was it with men trying to feed me all the time? “No. Al—”

  “I am,” he said, interrupting me as he reached for a covered basket beside the hearth. It was tied with a checkered bow, and I imagined it was from Newt—hopefully on one of her good days. “I’ve not eaten in weeks, it feels like,” he said as he undid the ribbon and looked inside.

  “Al, I need your help.”

  “Oh.” His expression fell. “I am not eating that. Rachel, this is foul. Come smell this.”

  “Al!”

  Al stopped fussing with the basket, his head down. “I know you want to use my rings. You aren’t strong enough to overpower Ku’Sox alone. No one is, not even two demons together. Not three. Five, it took last time, and since only four walked away from the encounter, no one is willing to try again. Especially when there are bribes of mended demon babies with which to escape to the sun in.”

  “You know?” I said, my surprise quickly vanishing.

  He eyed me as if embarrassed. “Of course. I was burned, not lobotomized. My wedding rings are not enough.” Pulling them from a pocket, he pushed them around in his palm with a bare finger. “Even if you and I wore them and stood before Ku’Sox, they would not be enough.”

  I was starting to get mad. Why did I have to do this all by myself? “You’ve given up!”

  A weary slump came over him. “Rachel . . . We made him to be better than us, able to crush an elf warlord on his own. My rings are not enough.”

  “But I know how to fix the line!” I protested, and he reached up to set his rings on the slate table beside him. “It’s not broken, just overloaded. Ku’Sox shoved all the tiny imbalances in your collective lines into mine, making them more than the sum of their energies. Bis and I separated Newt’s signature imbalance from that purple sludge and got it back into the line she made.”

  His eyes widened, and I stifled a shudder at the new blackness of them. “Interesting,” he said, tossing another chunk of earth on the flames. “The loss is keyed to individual lines . . . and you separated one?” Settling himself deeper into the flagstones, he seemed to find strength with the fire behind him. “Is this why Newt’s room are not shrinking anymore?”

  “Probably,” I said, wondering if there was a direct connection between the imbalance, the leak, and the missing mass. If so, she wasn’t going to like my dumping the imbalance into her line. “That’s why Ku’Sox took Bis. But I don’t need Bis to move the entire ball of sludge to Newt’s line and expose Ku’Sox’s curse.”

  Al’s expression twisted. “Whereupon he will descend upon you and—”

  “Turn me into a dark spot on the ever-after floor. Yeah,” I said, picking at a seam in the floor. “I was hoping that once I proved he did it that maybe some of you might . . . I don’t know . . . help me maybe!” I shouted, frustrated.

  Chuckling, Al resettled himself. “I would, but it will take at least five, not counting you because you don’t know squat.”

  I would have argued with him, but he was right. “Quen will stand with us. And Trent, if we can get him free.”

  Al stiffened at Trent’s name. “Elf magic might prevail where demon can’t,” he admitted grudgingly. “As much as I’m loath to admit it, Trent would be the better choice.” He poked at the fire to send up a flurry of copper-colored sparks. “He’s a savage beast with a strong bond to his trickster goddess.” His eyes met mine in warning. “Powerful, but chaotic. Untrustworthy.”

  It wasn’t a ringing endorsement, but surprisingly promising, and I eyed him from around my snarling hair. “Are you saying that elf magic is more powerful than demon?”

  “I would never admit that,” he said with a guffaw. “But Ku’Sox knows demon magic. Elf magic, from the old wars? Not so much.”

  The way he was looking at me made me nervous, and I dropped my eyes.

  “Mmm,” he grumbled, apparently satisfied. “Demons acting in concert isn’t enough. To surpass Ku’Sox, there must be a complete melding of thoughts into one action. My rings only work between demons. There’s no way to join an elf soul to a demon.”

  There is, I thought, suddenly scared to say it. “Ah, that’s kind of why I’m here . . .” Heart pounding, I extended my arm and opened my palm, the firelight glinting on the rings.

  Al leaned forward in interest, his thick bare fingers brushing against mine as he took the rings. “These are . . . Where did you get these?” he said, his black eyes narrowed as he made a fist around them, hatred pouring from him.

  My lips parted. Scared, I fought to keep from backing up. His grip on the rings looked tight enough to crush them. My thought went back to what Quen had said about demons perhaps being slaves first. “The museum. I wanted something else, but they were gone when I got there, and these were—” I gasped when his fist clenched. “Al, no!” I shouted, grabbing his hand and trying to pry open his fingers. “Don’t break them! It’s all I have! Please!”

  He snarled at me, the lines in his square features heavy and ugly. With a grimace, he yanked out of my grip and threw the rings into the corner. My breath came fast, and I lunged after the twin pinging sounds, scrabbling like a spider as I found first one, then the other.

  I held them tight to my chest, my back to him as my pulse pounded. He would never help me. Head high, I walked back to the fire with the rings in my shaking hand.

  “Elven slavers!” Al growled. “They are ugly, and I have done a lot of ugly, Rachel.”

  “Ku’Sox is uglier,” I said stiffly. “This is what I have. I’m going to use them. If I can hold him off long enough, maybe the rest of you cowards will stand up to him.”

  “Except the rings are dead.” Al’s voice was harsh.

  I stood before him, the fire warming my shins. I wasn’t sure how he was going to react once I told him I could bring them back to life. “I, ah, can reinvoke them.”

  He looked up at me, a sour anger in the tilt of his head. “No one can reinvoke them.”

  Sitting down, I scooted until our knees almost touched. “I reinvoked elven silver two days ago with Pierce’s help.”

  Taking up a poker, he jabbed it into the flames. They were slavers. He’d never help me. “So go ask him,” Al muttered, clearly not believing me.

  “He’s dead. Nick helped him escape Newt so he and Ceri could try to kill Ku’Sox.”

  “Ceridwen?” Al’s head snapped up. “What does she have to do with this?”

  I suddenly remembered that she’d been with him for a thousand years, that he’d been so careless when replacing her as his familiar that I’d been able to save her life. Looking back, I think he’d done it intentionally. And all this time I’d thought that I’d been more clever than he. God, I was stupid. I think he had loved her.

  “Al, I’m sorry,” I whispered, kicking myself for not considering that he might feel pain at her loss. “Ku’Sox—”

  Al extended a shaky hand to stop my words, his head dropping. “Enough,” he said, the hard sound of his voice a band of metal around my heart, squeezing,
hurting.

  I shifted closer, the scent of burnt amber coming from the fire stinging my eyes. Al had taken a deep breath, and I watched as he slowly exhaled, his hands unclenching. “I’m sorry. I thought you knew. Didn’t Newt tell—”

  “I said enough!”

  I hunched into myself, my own grief welling up as I watched him shove his own down, denying its existence. “Al, I need your help,” I whispered, and he seemed to become a dark lump before the low flames. “I only have until tomorrow midnight. I’ve done this before. I don’t know why it’s not working.”

  Al’s shoulders were slumped under that blanket, and his expression was numb. I wasn’t even sure he was listening anymore. “You don’t know what you ask.”

  “It’s the only way to make a sure connection between an elf and a demon,” I said. “And since no demon will help me . . .”

  Al’s head turned from the fire. His black eyes bore into me, and I stifled another shudder. “Top shelf,” he said flatly. “Behind the books.”

  I followed his gaze to one of the few open bookcases. Silently I stood and shoved the rings in my front pocket. Feeling his eyes on me, I crossed the room, counting my steps. It was smaller by about a foot. My hands were steady as I stood on tiptoe, one hand on the shelf for balance as I moved three books out of the way, my hand searching blindly in the small space behind them. A jolt went through me as I found the cool, smooth shape of a ring.

  “Don’t put it on,” Al cautioned as my heels came down and I turned with a ring in my hand. It was tiny, almost a pinkie ring. I wondered whose it was, since it wouldn’t fit on Al’s hand. Unless . . . he was in the shape of that gaunt black bat.

  “What is it?” I asked, cold but too wary to come back to the fire.

  “Half of a set,” he grudgingly said, his eyes down as he snatched it from me, cradling the ring to him as if it were alive. My eyes widened as I realized it was his shackle, his tie to a miserable past. “I want you to see this,” he said. “To know what you risk.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said softly as I came forward to sit cross-legged before him again. He was flushed, embarrassed and ashamed to be clearly still tied to it. “Where’s the other half?”