[English] THE WITCH WITH NO NAME

The Witch With No Name
The Witch With No Name Page 130



I held my breath as Dali sighed, eyes averted as he balanced what was at stake and what it might cost. Pride was his fulcrum, unfairly shifting the weight so that one side had greater force than the other to make a wrong decision more than possible, but likely. We were going to doom the world to another wave of needless violence because of pride, I thought, already trying to find a way to make this work without the demons’ help. Perhaps the dewar would be enough.

But Dali stood, looking down at himself, stuck in the form he was in when the lines closed. “No one likes this helpless muck we wallow in. I’ll ask them. They will decide.”

My heart leapt, and Trent’s fingers tightened on my shoulder.

“Excuse me,” Newt said as she beamed, reaching for Al gracefully. “There might be some dissent that needs to be addressed. Al, will you accompany me?”

Silent, Al picked up his bottle. Not looking at me, he stomped past, his shiny cop shoes catching the light and his pace holding an amazing amount of determination and bad attitude. He yanked the door open, his steps audible on the carpet as he went to the great room.

“Dali?” Newt asked smoothly, her hand now extended to the more powerful, slightly overweight demon.

“This isn’t going to be easy,” Dali grumbled as they left together.

“Nonsense.” Newt looked over her shoulder at me and winked. “You got them to let her into the collective as a student. You even got them to stand up to Ku’Sox when she and Al and that elf of theirs stood up to him. And they didn’t kill Trent because of you,” Newt was saying as the door eased shut. “Getting them to practice elven magic will be nothing,” came through, muted, and then Dali’s bitter laugh.

My skin tingled where Trent’s hand traced across it as he moved to the wet bar. “Trent?”

He was silent as the enormity of what we were going to try to do fell on us. Still not saying anything, he brought me a glass of water. “Here,” he said as the cool glass filled my hand. “You need to keep your fluids up.”

“Trent . . .”

“Drink it,” he said, and I obediently took a sip, the room-temperature water bland as it slipped into me. Sighing, he sat down beside me, his brow furrowed and his gaze hard on nothing. “I want to say that it’s going to be okay,” he finally said.

“But you don’t know.” Ribs ached as I leaned to set the water on the floor. “Trent, the Goddess is looking for me. She’s better equipped for a mental battle and she knows how to fight me off. I don’t want to kill her, which means I’ll have seconds to wrestle control away, and then I’ll be fighting to get free before I infect her too deeply for her to shake it off. And then what? I’ll be hiding from her the rest of my life.”

Trent’s eyes touched on mine and he reached for my hands. “You don’t know that.”

My fingertips tingled where they rested against his aura. I started to pull back, and he gripped me harder. “Don’t move,” he said sheepishly. “You’re getting rid of my headache.”

Damn it, I was coated in them even now. No wonder Dali was looking at me like I was a leper. “You too, eh?” I said, giving up on trying to hide them anymore.

“I was so scared when they hauled you up onto that stage,” Trent said suddenly, and I held my breath as he carefully pulled me into him. “I saw my entire life with nothing. My money gone, my power stolen. I couldn’t reach you and no one listened to me. I thought they were going to kill you.”

I could hear his heartbeat as I rested my head on his chest. It felt good to do nothing. “So did I,” I whispered, unable to say it louder lest I start to cry. I’d been terrified for him. For Jenks.

“And now you’re going to do it again.”

His hand gently stroked my hair. I didn’t want to move for anything. “Probably.”

Trent made a rueful sound. “You were right. As usual. This is hard. But I’m going to do it anyway.”

He kissed the top of my head, and I tilted myself so I could find his lips with mine. A faint tingle spread between us, warming and healing even as my leg throbbed.

His eyes were glistening when our lips parted. I wished that this was over and it was tomorrow, and we were having coffee at Mark’s before taking the girls to the zoo. “You should stay here with the girls,” I said, and his hold on me tightened.

“Just try to stop me.”

He was looking at my mouth again, but my besotted smile faded at the sudden rap of a thick knuckle at the door.

“Ivy and Nina . . . ,” I whispered, fear causing a spike of adrenaline in me.

“Quen?” Trent said, his brow furrowed as he carefully helped me to sit up while the door opened. His hands were gentle, but I was still grimacing when I looked up to find it was Al, not Quen, standing there—staring at us with the memory of his own loss so clear on him it hurt. Seeing my pity, his face hardened.

“I wanted to let you know that Quen has found word of the ambulance driver and paramedic who picked your . . . friends up. They’re both in intensive care with internal injuries.”

“No.” I fell back into the couch after trying to stand. “What happened?”

“They’ll both make it. It helps that they were living vampires,” Al said dryly. “But as for Ivy and Nina . . .” He shrugged. “There is no sign of them.”

“Cormel.” My heart pounded as I turned to Trent. “He wanted to talk to you. He took them!”

Trent rose, pace fast as he went for the phone on the desk. Al cleared his throat to stop him dead in his tracks. “It wasn’t Cormel who injured the paramedic and the driver,” Al said. “It was Nina.”

Tension pulled my shoulders tight as I figured it out. Nina had died on the way. The sun had set and she’d never lost consciousness. She had freaked out, and Ivy had tried to contain her. ****, where would Ivy have taken her to try to bring her under control? Somewhere safe where Cormel couldn’t touch her?

Heart in my throat, I grabbed the arm of the couch and pulled myself up. “I have to go.”

“But the demons and the lines . . . ,” Trent started, and then he changed his mind, bending to pick up the crutch Newt had thrown, bringing it to me with a sad, determined look.

“Al, tell everyone I’m sorry. I have to go. I’ll be back as soon as I can.” The crutch fit under my arm, painful as I hobbled to the door. Al stood and did nothing, making me wonder if he’d told me this knowing I’d leave. He knew better than most how close I’d come to losing myself the last time I’d fought the Goddess.

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“I might suggest the helicopter,” the demon said, voice oily. “The entrance you make in that is almost as good as simply . . . popping in. Besides, the roads are impassable. I’ll go with you. No one listens to me anymore.”

“I know the feeling,” Trent said, but I was already halfway to the hallway.

“Thank you,” I said breathlessly as I passed Al.

“Don’t thank me.” Al looked at his fingertips in speculation. “I just don’t want to be there while Newt explains to the collective that we have to work with the elven Goddess to try to reopen the lines.”

“That bad, eh?” I muttered, jaw clenched as we found the hallway.

Al leaned close, voice dangerous as he whispered, “We don’t forget, Rachel, and it’s not as if it was our ancestors who were betrayed. It was us.”

Chapter 29

The glow from the streetlight made long shadows against the tombstones, and the chopper blades whipped everything not nailed down out and away. I’d never get through my hair tonight without a bottle of detangler, and I made a mental note to check my bathroom before we left—because even if Ivy was here, there was no way we could stay.

“Careful,” Trent said, arm around my waist as he helped me over the shallow wall that separated the graveyard from the garden. My stomach was tight, and Jenks was swearing as he looked over the destruction. I couldn’t bring myself to look up, even as the helicopter began to shut down and the wind quit pushing.

“What an unholy mess,” Al said from behind me, and I suddenly realized he was walking on sanctified ground. The elven curse was well and truly broken then.

One good thing, I thought, looking up.

Breath catching, I stopped, pain stabbing my leg as Trent continued on for a step. Backpedaling, he stood beside me as tears threatened to blur my vision. I will not cry, I said to myself, but my chest was tight and my throat almost closed.

“I’m sorry, Rachel,” Trent said, gently pushing me back into motion.

I let him, my head down again as we angled to the stone walk and the undamaged wooden fence. “Bis?” I called as we circled around the front, but there was nothing, no cheerful sparkling of pixy dust, no wind-chime laughter, no deep rumbling response from the gargoyle—just the faint hush of traffic a street over. It felt dead here, abandoned.

“I’ll find him,” Jenks said as he hacked his way through the tangle of my hair.

“You can fly?” I asked as he got himself free and hovered backward, tugging his clothes straight and checking his sword belt.

“Yeah.” Expression serious, he peered up at the steeple. “It feels pretty good here, even if it looks like the back room of a troll bordello.”

He darted up, wings clattering, and Al pushed past us. “Damn mystics,” he muttered, stomping through the gate and toward the front door.

Mystics. I suppose they might have gathered here more than anywhere else, either mine or the Goddess’s thousand eyes looking for me.

Guilt closed in. I should have checked on Bis. Okay, I’d been busy, and until the sun went down he hadn’t been in any danger, but I was responsible for him.

“He’s a grown gargoyle,” Trent said, whispering it so Al wouldn’t hear.

“How do you do that!” I exclaimed, but Trent’s smile faded very fast. “He’s just a kid.”

Al turned from where he waited in the shadows, his new suit rumpled. “Treble is sleeping,” he said, voice low. “I’m sure he’s doing the same.”

Sleeping or in shock? I mused, stretching out my awareness and finding nothing, nothing at all. Trent’s grip on my elbow pinched as he looked behind us at the empty graveyard. Al took the stairs, impatient with our slow pace. Neighbors watched us from behind tweaked blinds, vanishing when he sarcastically doffed his hat at them. “You’d think they never saw a demon before,” Al muttered.

“I think it’s the helicopter,” I said, glancing over my shoulder before starting up the wooden stairs. Ivy had to be here. She was scared, possibly hurt. Vampires always went home to ground when they were hurt. The city was in a panic, but here in the Hollows it was eerily silent as everyone held their breath for sunrise. Please be okay, Ivy. Please.

Al gave the DON’T CROSS tape a look before yanking it down to flutter into the bushes. Jenks’s wings were almost normal, and I felt the first hints of relief at the bright silver dust.

“I found Bis,” he said as Trent helped me up the stairs. “He looks okay. His aura looks like he’s just asleep.”

“Are you sure?” I asked, and Al grunted as he shoved the door open.

“I told you, it’s the shock. If they’re lucky, they’ll simply not wake up.”

Saying nothing more, Al strode inside as if it didn’t bother him, but I could tell it did. His grumbling grew louder as he clicked the light switch several times to no effect.

“Jenks, what about Ivy?” I whispered.

The pixy hovered before Trent and me, a worried dust slipping from him. “She’s in her room. Nina too. Wait!” he shouted when I started forward. “Slow down. You go in there stinking like fear and you’ll set Nina off. Give Ivy a chance to organize her thoughts. She knows you’re here. They’ll be afraid of Al, but you and Trent look like easy prey.”

Oh God. “It’s bad?”

Jenks nodded, making my heart sink. “You, cookie maker, need to take a backseat. We know how to bring Ivy down. You don’t.”

“I know what not to do,” Trent said, but his worry was obvious as he helped me shuffle inside. I was glad there was no light as I looked over the soggy gloom. Al was poking about my seldom-used desk, head ****ed as he held up a tiny chair Jenks had left there. Jenks was darting about, lighting the candles we had scattered around for when the power went out. Slowly the space brightened as the wicks took hold and wax began to burn. It smelled—sort of a sour, bite-at-the-back-of-your-throat smell, stinking of vampire fear and heartache. Ivy . . .

I looked down the black hallway, both afraid and anxious.

“Maybe I should go get Bis,” Trent said, and Jenks made a sparkling beeline back to us.

“That’s the best idea I’ve heard out of you since you, ah . . . never mind. You’re going to need a ladder,” Jenks said, but Trent was already taking the belfry stairs two at a time. Sighing, Jenks pointed at Al, then his own eyes, and then Al again before following Trent.

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Al frowned, wearing that same wary, reluctant look he’d had in Trent’s office before he walked out with Newt and Dali. He made a “get on with it” gesture, and my heart thudded. Jenks was watching him, eh?

“Ivy?” I called, wanting to give her even more warning. “You here?” It was obvious she was, and I limped to the top of the hallway. There was a thin crack of light leaking from under her door, and I looked at Al. “Why are you here?”

“To catch you when you fall. And you will fall. It’s simply a matter of finding the right lever.”

Swell. “Ivy?” I called again. “Ah, you okay?”

Breathless, I waited at the sudden slide and thump of something heavy in Ivy’s room. A frantic hush of words followed. It was Ivy, and I reached out, finding myself painfully yanked back into Al. I fought to get his hand off me, stopping when Ivy shouted, “No. Nina, no!” I hesitated, Al’s grip easing as Ivy added, “It’s Rachel. Please. I’ll be right back.”

“Don’t take it away. Don’t leave me. No. No!” Nina howled, a desperate pain in her voice. “Oh God. Give it to me!” she suddenly raged. “Give it to me!”

I couldn’t move as Nina’s fierce demands dissolved into heartrending sobs. Any hope I might have had that the newly undead might survive their souls died. Clearly Ivy had captured Nina’s, and Nina was out of her mind to get it back. Everything was out of balance and her second death was the only way to bring it back again.

“Whoever made this curse was a sadist,” I whispered, and Al’s grip on me fell away.

The light spilled into the cramped hallway as Ivy opened her door. The sound of Nina’s heartrending sobs pulled at me as Ivy slipped out and shut it behind her. The newly undead were often unpredictable as their mind reorganized under overwhelming shifts of hormones and instincts while the body fought with the mind, trying to convince it that it was still alive. Hunger usually kicked in when the original aura was depleted to a measurable threshold. But that wasn’t why Nina begged for Ivy to return in great gasping sobs. It wasn’t blood Nina wanted, it was her soul.

Back against the door, Ivy stared at me with black, haunted eyes, chilling me. “You shouldn’t be here.”

“This shouldn’t have happened.” I hobbled forward, tears blurring my sight. “Ivy, I’m so sorry,” I gushed, my arms going around her as she began to cry.

Great gasping sobs shook her, and I held her to me, the silk feel of her hair bunched between us. My own tears flowed at the unfairness of it all, the end of her hope that she and Nina might have something normal, that they might have a life, a love, in the fleeting time they were allowed a moment of happiness before the curse came around full circle and took it all away.

“I’m so sorry,” I whispered, hardly breathing.

“She wanted me to kill her,” Ivy sobbed, her voice muffled. “She begged me, but I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t even lie to her and promise I would.”

“It’s okay,” I said, and she pulled back from me, eyes glistening as Nina quietly wept behind the door Ivy guarded.

Ivy wiped her eyes, looking more beautiful than I’d ever seen her even if it was grief that brought her alive. “She died in the ambulance on the way to the hospital,” Ivy whispered. “There was no way to stop it. And I couldn’t finish it. When she begged the paramedic to, I . . . I wouldn’t let him.”

She’d fought them. She’d beaten them into unconsciousness with the savagery of a lover protecting the one she loved.

Trying to smile, I wiped the tears from my cheek and sniffed. “It’s okay,” I said, stomach knotting. “I wouldn’t have been able to do it either. Remember?” I hated them, hated the demons for this. Of all the curses I’d seen, heard whispers of, witnessed the destruction from, this utter raping of hope by destroying people through their love and fear was the worst.

Ivy licked her lips, haunted eyes flicking past me when Nina sobbed behind the shut door. “I should have killed her twice, but I was so scared that her soul would be lost forever when the lines fell and there was nowhere for it to go. Nina was fine until her soul went into the bottle.”

Another heartrending cry of loss rose behind the door when Ivy opened her hand to show me the hazy bottle I’d given her. Nina’s moan was so filled with pain it even made Al shift his feet. Or maybe he just wanted a closer look.

“I had to do it.” Ivy’s hand shook. “I had to. I couldn’t let her soul go to that hell.”

I took Ivy’s hand in mine, closing her fingers over the bottle before she dropped it. Her hands were frighteningly cold. Her head bowed, and I pulled her to me again, hating the demons all the more. But a niggling thought wedged under my heartache. Ivy had used the bottle after the lines had fallen. It had worked with the Goddess’s strength. Mystics wreathed her, unseen and unnoticed, my thousand eyes that I’d blinded myself to still working my will for me.

From behind the door, a wail rose, and Ivy sniffed back her tears. “She knows I have it. She wants it, but it will make her walk into the sun. Rachel, I can’t.”

I jerked when Ivy pulled back, her expression suddenly empty. “You take it,” she whispered, pressing the bottle into my hands. “Take it and hide it.”

“Ivy, I can’t.”

“Hide it where she can’t find it. Rachel, please!”

“It’s mine!” Nina howled, having heard us, and Ivy’s eyes went wide. Shaking, I forced the bottle back into Ivy’s hand.

“That won’t help,” I said, hating my own cowardice.

Ivy’s head bowed. “I didn’t know it could hurt this much,” she whispered to me. “I watched my mother die her first death, and then Kisten passed on.”

Again I pulled her to me, trying to give her strength.

“This is so wrong,” she breathed, but the tears were gone, leaving only an exhausted numbness. “How is your leg?”

“My leg?” We separated, and my heart seemed to break at the distance between us. “My leg will be fine,” I said, almost crying again.

“Ivy?” Nina warbled behind the door. “Please, I need it! Just for a moment. I’ll give it back. I promise!”

Ivy swallowed hard, empty as she stood before me and glanced at the door. “I’ve got her tied up. I was hoping . . .” Her shoulders fell, and she glanced behind me to Al. “I decided that she should have it, even if she walks into the sun.”

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“Ivy . . .”

Tears spilled from her anew as her chin lifted. “Even if it means she dies.” Her black gaze found Al. “You all deserve to die in whatever manner the elves can devise. What you have forced on us deserves payment in pain.”

Al became solemn. “The elves killed the maker of the curse years ago.”

“You let him do it!” Ivy raged, and Nina screamed in pain behind the door.

Al held his hat before him, head lowered. “I agree, but we can’t unravel her work.”

A woman? I mused. A woman did this?

“And even if we could,” Al said, gesturing to the door, “enough of the undead would refuse it out of fear, wanting the chance at immortality even if it cost them their soul.” His gaze fastened on Ivy, and she quailed. “You yourself can’t walk away from it. Or you would have let Rachel take the virus from you already.”

“Al, stop,” I said as shame caused Ivy to drop her eyes.

“You like it,” Al said bitterly. “The urge, the lust, the glorious satisfaction of fulfilling that need.”

“That’s enough!” I exclaimed, but my neck was tingling with remembered passion.

Expression holding a bitter betrayal, Al shifted his accusing gaze from Ivy to me. “The curse is power, Rachel, and she knows without it her world would be flat and gray. She’d rather live with pain and heartache than no feeling at all.”

Angry, I got in his face. “That is a sad excuse to cover your own guilt,” I snapped, then dropped back when Ivy touched my arm.

“No, he’s right,” she said, shocking me. Her hand fumbled behind her, rattling the knob. Never turning around, she pushed open the door. “See what your pride has wrought, demon.”

She opened the door to show her bedroom, the cool grays and soothing greens lit by a battery-powered lantern hanging from the dark light fixture. Nina was tied up with soft straps. They were designed for this, but they still cut into her skin as she struggled to be free, her eyes black and wide. Blood marked her clothes, but I think it was from the fight in the ambulance. She hadn’t been dead long enough to be hungry. Though her soul was gone, her aura would remain for a few hours yet.

“Ivy, please,” Nina begged, straining to be free. “Just for a moment. You can have it back, but I need it just for a moment.” Her eyes flicked to mine, then back to Ivy. “I need it now!” she raged, a muffled scream coming from her as she fought her bonds.

“Interesting . . .”

I spun, reaching for the support of Ivy’s dresser when my leg almost gave out. “Interesting?” I snapped at Al. “You son of a bastard! These are my friends!”

Al’s eyes twitched, but he never took them off Nina. “I mean,” he said as he shoved me deeper into the room, “that she knows where her soul is. Your spell bound it so completely that she recognizes it.”

“Give it to me!” Nina cried out, her emotions swinging back to sadness. “Give it to me, it’s mine,” she sobbed.

Ivy dropped to her knees, taking Nina into her arms and hiding her face. She whispered things I couldn’t hear, and Nina’s rage dissolved into a helpless, sobbing acceptance.

My stomach churned. I thought of Bis up in the belfry and Trent probably trying to reach him without a ladder. Before me, Ivy and Nina both ached, trapped in a hell of the demons’ making. The fear of the people in the square rose up in my thoughts, good people so scared they thought the only way out was genocide.

“We have to reopen the lines,” I said, and behind me Al sighed.

“Rachel, I know Newt thinks it’s possible, but it isn’t.”

“To separate them forever from their souls is . . .” I turned to Al, searching. “I don’t know a word that means that depraved and cruel.”

“To say it would break the worlds,” Al said, but I didn’t think there could be a word like that, and he turned as Trent scuffed into view with a sleeping gargoyle in his arms, Jenks on his shoulder. Trent’s eyes widened as he took in Nina tied to the chair and Ivy kneeling in front of her, trying to ground her, bring her back. Seeing all eyes on them, Ivy whispered something to Nina and got to her feet to stand protectively beside her. Her jaw was clenched and I was so proud of her. Even now she was willing to fight.

“No, this was very well done,” Al said as he eased into the room and lifted Nina’s gaze to his by lifting her chin with a careful finger. “Very well done.”

“You son of a bitch.” I shoved Al. He fell back, catching himself on the dresser, his red goat-slitted eyes narrowed.

“Easy, Rachel,” Trent said, but Jenks had taken to the air as well, blade pulled.

“I should have let you all die, you know that!” I shouted, shaking.

Al tugged his suit straight. “Yes, you should have,” he said mildly, pissing me off. “But you didn’t. I have an idea.”

“So do I.” I shrugged off Trent’s hand, feeling braver when Ivy and Jenks fell into place beside me. “It involves you and that crowd at Fountain Square.”

Al’s dismissive look made my face burn. Speculation heavy in his gaze, he turned to Ivy. “What are you willing to sacrifice for her?” he asked Ivy, and my heart seemed to stop at the thoughtful but manipulative tone in his voice.

Ivy’s eyes flashed. “Everything.”

I stiffened. Nina’s head came up, only it was not hope but my fear that roused her. “Ivy, no,” I warned, and Al sniffed derisively, already knowing Ivy’s answer.

“Everything!” Ivy said again, almost grabbing his arm.

Al flicked a glance at me, then back to her. “Be utmost sure. Your needs, your desires, no longer yours alone but wedded to another?” he said, and Ivy nodded, grasping at the barest hint of hope. “What another needs, you must attend to. What another craves, you must find. It will be heaven if you love her or hell if there’s any doubt. It can’t be undone, and you will be responsible for her soul until she dies a second death or you lose yours as well. It’s a chance, nothing more.”

“How?” Ivy begged, and I could take this no more.

“Ivy, he’s a demon!”

“So are you!” she exclaimed, then lowered her voice as Nina began to sob again, calling for her soul. “Tell me,” Ivy demanded of Al, her own fear making her even more desperately beautiful. “I will do anything to stop this.”

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My heart thudded as Al was silent, thinking. “Ask her,” he finally said, chin lifting to indicate me.

“Me?” My anger vanished. Jenks’s dust was an uneasy red and Trent’s face was pale.

“Rachel, please,” Ivy said, and I jumped when she took my hands. She was trembling. “I’ll do anything. I love her!”

“I . . . I know you do,” I stammered, trying to figure this out. Me? Was he serious?

Al took Ivy’s free hand, opening it to show that tiny bottle I’d given her. Taking it, he moved it to mine, closing my fingers about it. I swallowed hard at the stirring I felt within it. Tingles cramped my arm, and Nina moaned, voice raw and raspy.

“I can’t put Nina’s soul back into her body,” I protested. “It’s going to do the same thing it did to Felix and she’ll suncide to bring her mind, body, and soul back in balance.”

“True,” Al drawled, making Jenks yo-yo up and down in impatience.

“Then what, ash breath?” the pixy snarled. “You hurt any of my friends anymore and I’ll lobotomize you in your sleep!”

Al frowned, but Ivy’s hope had kindled in me and Al’s confidence fanned it to a painful brightness. “To remain sane, her soul needs the stimulation of a stable, living body and aura,” Al lectured, as if trying to teach a dull student. “And so . . . ,” he drawled, gesturing for me to finish it.

“I need to put it into someone still alive,” I said, glancing at Trent when he made an abrupt noise of realization. “Ivy, if I put her soul into you—”

“You can do that?” Jenks asked, his suspicion thick.

“Of course my itchy witch can,” Al huffed as Ivy went three shades whiter. “She already put an alien presence in that Were fellow, David, was it? And there was no love there. At least not at first. I think he rather likes it now.”

Yes, David liked the focus. It was made to live through another, the symbiosis complete and beautiful. But Nina’s soul was hers. To graft it to another . . . was that right?

But as I looked at Ivy’s hope and Nina’s ragged exhaustion, I figured what was right didn’t matter much. “She might still need to take in her aura with your blood,” I said, and Ivy grasped my hands. They were shaking, but her need to do this was absolute.

“I don’t care,” Ivy whispered, alive and filled with hope, more beautiful for having seen her despair only moments before. “I want this. It feels right. I love Nina. She . . . loves me. I can’t see her like this, and I can’t end it. Please!”

I felt light and unreal. “I don’t know what it will do to you. What happens when you die? Will both your souls perish?”

“I don’t care!” Ivy shouted, and I turned to Al and Trent, wanting their opinion.

“It’s Nina’s soul, free of her consciousness,” Al said. “Unlike that ill-fated attempt when you, ah, tried to bind with that soul, Ivy likely won’t notice a thing. But there will be far-reaching repercussions from this.”

“I don’t care,” Ivy whispered.

“Well, I do,” I said, very aware of how much he liked breaking people with their own desires. “Tell me why you want this, Al, or nothing happens.”

“Rachel!” Ivy cried, and I clenched my teeth and faced Al squarely. Behind him, Trent and Jenks waited, scared but trusting me.

Al’s smile went wickedly crafty. “Ivy will be the first of a new kind of master vampire,” he said, and Trent made a soft sound of understanding. “A living one. The newly undead will look to the living for their continued existence, much as they do now, but it’s the undead who will be bound to the living, not the other way around. It should impart a measure of . . . morality that’s absent now.”

I hesitated, seeing the hope for the end of a long-kept guilt in him, and Al dropped his eyes, embarrassed perhaps that I knew him so well. “The soul Nina sips from Ivy will be her own,” Al said. “Where is the guilt in that? Freely given, freely held. The undead will lose their clout. It will fall to the living. Where it should be.”

The undead controlled by the living? I thought, seeing the sense of it.

“I want to try,” Ivy said, and I turned to Nina.

Nina stared at us, her gaze pained and her desperation shining. “Ivy can have my soul,” she whispered, voice ragged, in ribbons. “She already has my heart,” she panted, head drooping so her hair hid her face. “Oh God, it hurts. That you might be able to do this hurts. Please. Just do something. I can’t exist like this.”

The need to fix this seemed to warm me from within. My hands shook, and tingles raced through me as Trent slipped an arm around my waist. I felt ill, breathless. “This will break the original curse, won’t it?”

A rare smile holding a long-held pain crossed Al’s face. “As no other thing can, but it must be done on an individual basis and will be reassuringly slow as it filters through the population and gives us something to pay our rent with.”

“The transition will be gradual enough that it won’t destroy the current balance,” Trent said, his expression hopeful as he saw the possibilities in what we were about to unleash. I thought it fitting we’d do it here in a broken church.

“What do we need?” I said, and Al clapped his hands once, making me jump and Jenks ink a bright sparkle of silver and black.

“Salt,” he said, eyes glinting. “Lots and lots of salt.”

Chapter 30

We didn’t have salt, thanks to my kitchen being firebombed, but we did have pixy dust. Jenks was almost his old self as we readied the charm, feeling needed as we moved the furniture to make a large space in the sanctuary. Candles glowed from the sills of the stained-glass window, and Bis slumbered, hanging from the light over the pool table. He’d never woken when Trent transferred his clawed feet to the cold metal, and he looked like a huge bat hanging there. I hoped he was all right, and I promised myself I’d see this through—one thing at a time.

My stomach hurt as Al finished wiping down the old oak floor, his goat-slitted eyes worried as he threw my silk dress into a corner, having removed “excess stray ions” with it. “Ivy goes in the middle,” Al said, sounding unsure. “The spiral is etched outward from her.”

“Ivy?” I called, and I heard her coaxing Nina out of their room. She was still bound, but she numbly sat where Ivy put her. Suspicious, I turned to Al. His motions were too fast, too quick. He wanted this even as his regret and worry grew with every moment. “Why are you doing this?” I asked.

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“Jenks, dust a spiral, please,” the demon said, avoiding me, and my eyes narrowed. “Start at the center and move widdershins. Three arms is tra***ional. And keep enough space so that if Rachel should fall she won’t hit one of the other arms.”

Fall?

“You want it flammable?” Jenks asked, and Al hesitated.

“Ah, no, but the longer you can make it glow the better.”

Hands on my hips, I frowned up at him. “Why are you doing this?” I asked again, and his eyes flicked to mine.

“You’re in the way.” Hands on my shoulders, he pushed me closer to the pool table. Peeved, I watched Jenks happily dust a sparkling silver path, skating a bare inch off the floor as he laid down a glow that I could tell would last a good five minutes. Plenty of time to save or damn a species—and my friends.

“Al,” I prompted, and he turned fast enough to make his coattails spin—if he’d been wearing his usual green crushed velvet instead of his forties suit.

“I never agreed to this,” he said, his distant gaze making it clear he was talking about the original vampire curse. “I maintained that it was unsporting to curse those who had no original intent, but Celfnnah was sustained by bitterness.”

Celfnnah. My eyes widened as I remembered. Al had a ring with her name on it. He had loved her. He had loved her so much that he couldn’t deny her revenge—her dark bile poisoning a thousand lives, a thousand lifetimes.

“If we’re *****rvive a return to this world we’ve been exiled from, we need to end this. We need to let the pain go and heal, no matter where the source comes from,” he whispered, but his heartache was not for me, but for her.

“Al, I’m sorry . . .”

“And the cost to perform this curse of binding will be exorbitant,” he added, gaze going everywhere but to me. “It will keep even Newt in new socks. I swear, that woman can put holes in her socks in one afternoon.”

“Al . . .”

“It’s a simple curse,” he said, ignoring that I’d seen his guilt and aching need to move on, to be accepted. “Most of it was prepped when you made the curse to bind the soul in the bottle. You’re simply moving it to a new container. Walk the spiral with Nina’s soul. It will draw it from the bottle as you go, and when you get to the end, you peel it off you and bind it to Ivy.”

Peel it off me? I didn’t like the sound of that. “If it’s that easy, why don’t you do it?”

“Because Ivy is not my friend,” Al said, his hands heavy on me as he moved me to stand right before the beginning of the spiral.

“I’ll do it,” Trent said suddenly.

“Because you, Rachel, are covered in elf ****,” Al amended, dramatically wiping his hand on his suit, “and you’re the only one they are listening to. Walk the spiral. I’ll catch you when you fall.”

He wasn’t talking about me falling because of my leg, and “covered in elf ****” meant the mystics. I believed him. My fingers had been tingling for the last five minutes, but even more telling was Jenks darting about as if nothing was wrong. Even Bis’s color had darkened to his normal pebbly gray, though he showed no signs of waking up. But if the mystics had found me, then the Goddess could, too. Make this fast, Rachel.

My heart pounded. Ivy stood at the center. Her hopeful expression almost hurt. She trusted me to do this right. Nina’s soul was in my hand, like a promise to be fulfilled.

“Plan C, eh? Bind the soul and run like hell,” I said, and Trent tried to smile, failing. Jenks was on his shoulder, and the pixy gave me a thumbs-up. This was for Ivy, for everything she’d suffered, everything she’d told herself she wasn’t deserving of. For her, I would risk it all.

And then I stepped forward, placing my foot on the glowing line.

My breath came with a slow intake, seeming to pull with it the memory of drums echoing against a sky faulted by uncountable stars. A slow lassitude spilled into me as I exhaled, pulling a ponderous beat from the spiral to replace the breath within me. I recognized it, accepted it as mine, drew it in to become one with it so I could bend it to my will. Wild magic.

The bottle grew ice cold in my hand, numbing as Nina’s soul coalesced from creation energy. Far, far older than the Goddess, it emerged, pushed by the waves of sound from the drums into a form that had no shape, a thought that came from no idea man had ever witnessed.

I paced forward as the cold crept up my arms, paining my elbows as I finished one spiral and began another. Within me, the first hints of a low chant echoed against the drums. They twined together, making a new sound to beat upon the soul seeping into me, forcing it into a pattern and shape that it once knew. It was a sound that hadn’t been heard for a thousand years. Tears pricked as I realized how much both species had lost in their war. Wild magic.

I struggled to keep my breathing even when a cold wash came spilling down my sides. The bottle was empty, and it fell from my numb hands as I gave myself up to the drums, knowing it was the only thing that kept Nina’s soul bound to the earth—and the soul rebelled, breathing the cold of death into me. My world was a glowing spiral, but as my will began to falter, threads long left fallow began to glow within my own soul, urging me to pick them up and begin anew. But to do so would be my end.

Dizzy, I began the third spiral. Ivy waited, eyes pinched and hand held out, reaching. I pushed one foot before the other, the heat-stealing soul seeping deeper, making my steps a flagging hesitancy. The seeping cold reached my soul, icing the edges, making me forget until it was only the memory of drums and the whispers of ancient elders that moved me forward. Ivy waited. Ivy waited for me. Ivy believed in me, pinned her life to me, not knowing that it would come to this . . . as I brought peace to her. If I could just move one more step. Wild magic.

“Help me,” I whispered as Nina’s soul sent cold daggers of teeth into me to tear and rend, and Ivy reached, pulling me to her.

Fire exploded in me at her touch and I gasped. Head jerking back, I sagged in Ivy’s arms, the drums thundering and the chant winding high through us, through our minds as the soul slipped from me and filled Ivy. We fell to the floor as Nina’s soul abandoned me for more delicious prey, prey that wanted to be taken.

“No! Stay back!” I heard Al shout, and a small scuffle. “The curse isn’t sealed. Touch them now, and the soul will slip from them both and be gone forever.”

“Ivy!” I called as the world rushed back and I was sitting at the center of a pixy-dust spiral, Ivy cold in my arms. I hadn’t exploded into flame; it had been the sudden absence of Nina’s soul. It was in Ivy, and it was struggling to take Ivy’s soul with it.

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“Seal it, Rachel,” Al demanded. “Now, before it escapes!”

Wild magic whispered through my mind, and with a desperate need to believe happy endings existed among the pain, I gave up and opened myself to the thousand eyes. Wild magic was mine.

“Ta na shay!” I shouted as the drums thundered, energy clean and deep coursing into me with the sound of folding wings. “Ta na shay!” See me!

My eyes opened wide and for an instant I saw everything from everywhere. My heart made a pained beat, and I choked. “Ta na shay. Cooms da ney,” I wept, and I watched with eyes not mine—eyes not of any world—as Nina’s soul eased to slumber, dropping the threads that would pull Ivy and Nina both from this world to whatever lay beyond. My throat closed from the sheer beauty, and I forgot to breathe. I thought I’d done it.

“Ivy?” I whispered, and her eyes opened. Their solid blackness shifted, becoming purple as she blinked and wings covered her soul. I could hear the sound of feathers, and my skin tingled with remembered pain.

Panicked, I turned to Al and Trent, but it was Bis whose gaze caught mine. He was awake, his red eyes whirling as his wings opened in fear.

“She found you,” he rasped, and both Trent and Al spun to him.

“You’re awake!” Trent called in shock before he looked back at me. “Did it work?”

“Ah, guys?” Jenks squeaked in distress as he hovered, spilling a hot dust. “I don’t think that’s a good thing. I think I’m going to explode here!”

Trent’s expression flashed to fear. He looked at his hands, hazed with gold as his aura resonated from the building energy. His eyes met mine, panicked.

“Mother pus bucket . . . ,” Al whispered, and then he lunged at me. “Rachel!”

But it was too late, and I cowered as a flash of brilliant light lit the church, burning with an icy intensity. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t see! Falling back, I squinted, picking out a darker shadow standing in the middle of the church, swarmed by glowing mystics.

“You!” a voice exclaimed, the hatred echoing in my head as if she’d spoken in my mind. “Your singular thoughts will be ended!”

It was the Goddess. She’d found me. “No, wait!” I cried, one hand propped up on the cold wooden floor as I slid between her and Ivy—and then I screamed as a white-hot knife of anger dove in my thoughts, driving to my core to rip out my soul.

“I will not become!” the figure shouted as I writhed, struggling to escape. “I will not be ended!”

But I couldn’t even breathe without taking in her mystics—and I floundered, burning from the inside out. Ivy. Ivy was beside me—unconscious.

“Rachel!” Trent cried, and then I heard a sodden thump.

Fear galvanized me, and I pulled my head up. Trent was picking himself up off the floor beside my desk, a spot of cool darkness in the fiery glow. Mystics were everywhere. I got a breath in, then another as my mystics coated me in a protective haze, buffering me and Ivy both. But it wasn’t Ivy the Goddess wanted to destroy.

Struggling to sit up, I blinked, trying to find the Goddess in the glow. Mystics coated her so heavily that the body she was in was slowly charring, sending the rank smell of burnt amber to coat my lungs.

“There will not even be a memory of you!” she howled, and I screamed as she flung out a flaming hand. A stream of living magic hit me and I fell, sliding across the smooth oak floor and hitting the wall. My head felt as if it was going to explode from her hatred as the Goddess’s strength wiggled deeper.

“Oh God, stop!” I pleaded, shaking as I collapsed. But I was only a singular thought that held many—not many thoughts making one, and she had me outnumbered. The mystics in me were trying, but it was all they could do to keep my lungs clear and my mind my own.

“You can’t help her!” Al shouted, and I pulled my head up, shaking as I saw the demon holding Trent back. Jenks and Bis were with him, both frightened. Nina had broken her bonds and was creeping to Ivy with the singular intent of not being noticed. As frightening as she looked, I knew Ivy would be safer with Nina than with me. It had always been so.

“She needs help, you coward!” Trent said, and Al yelped, letting him go.

Trent lunged for me, yanked back as the Goddess shot a bolt of living energy at him, exploding the floor in a shower of splinters—right where Trent would have been.

He fell back, face pale. I managed a clean breath at the brief respite. For all her strength, she couldn’t think of more than one thing at a time. I met Al’s eyes, knowing this was the end. At least the demons would survive, I thought, and then I blinked. The demons . . .

Maybe . . . The Goddess was here with all her mystics. I’d need them to reopen the lines. But I couldn’t do it alone. I needed the demons. I needed Al.

With a savage howl, the Goddess turned her attention back to me, and I jerked as great chunks of my memory went numb, connections to it sliced cleanly by the Goddess. “Al . . . ,” I groaned, hand outstretched, then clenched into myself as the Goddess laughed, her head thrown back as her mystics beat at me, burning me from the inside out.

“I will not become!” she howled, eyes glowing. “You cannot stop me!”

“You can’t help her!” Al thundered, shoving Trent behind him.

“Then you do something!” Trent raged. “Or have you learned nothing?”

“Fine!” Al shouted, and I gaped, unbelieving, as Al picked Trent up and threw him right at the Goddess.

The Goddess shrieked. A burst of light blinded me as Trent struck her, and then I screamed as the cold of death touched me.

“No! No!” I exclaimed, frantically trying to push away, but it was Al, and I took a grateful sob of air in as he pulled me from the floor and into his arms. He’d reached me. Bis was with him, and a tiny part of me marveled at the glowing glints of gold in his eyes. He was growing up.

“Stay down,” Al muttered. “She’ll just knock us over again. Trent is fine. Beneath her notice. You, though . . .”

“You both die!” the Goddess shrilled, and I jerked, head spinning. ****, she was headed right for us, her pace leaving flaming steps of rubber behind her as her shoes burned away.

“Hang on. This might be tricky,” Al warned. “I’m not used to this elf slime.”

I made a gasping hiccup as his masculine energy dipped into me, using me like a living ley line. “Hurry up!” I shouted as a brighter glow blossomed between her hands and her eyes seemed to shoot fire. “Al!” Holy crap, she was going to freaking kill us!

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“Someone do something!” Bis exclaimed, wings opening in alarm.

“Rhombus!” Al exclaimed, using my word to make a circle, and the world went dark. Panicked, I wiggled. “Al!”

“Don’t move, or you’re going to break it!” Bis shrilled, and I froze.

I took a breath, then another. We were in a circle. I saw it now. I hadn’t gone blind. It was Al’s smut, coating the molecule-thin barrier. “Trent . . .” Oh God, Al had thrown him at her.

“He’s fine,” Al said, and all three of us jumped as the Goddess hammered atop the bubble. I could see her now, looking wraithlike as she burned the body she was in, holding it together by sheer willpower. Al’s smut acted like sunglasses, and I spotted Nina huddled under Ivy’s baby grand, protecting Ivy with her body. Trent didn’t look much better, dazed as he sat against one of the piano’s legs with Jenks on his shoulder. They were all forgotten as the Goddess focused on me. I prayed that Trent would stay where he was. He looked okay.

My mystics were gathering inside the bubble. I could feel them freely passing in and out, making Al wiggle and squirm even as Bis basked in their warmth. “Al,” I whispered, feeling a possible hope. I probably wasn’t going to make it out of this circle alive—not with the Goddess standing and waiting to pummel me—but if she was here, and the mystics were here . . . I might as well try. “Al, we can reopen the lines.”

“Are you moonstruck!” he bellowed, then winced as the Goddess blew a hole in the ceiling in frustration. Thick beams bounced and rolled, and Nina pulled Ivy deeper under the piano as Trent and Jenks danced back out of the way. “Rachel, we’re going to be lucky to get out of this with our lives! The Goddess knows my aura signature now, too.”

“Like you really think we’re going to make it out of here alive?” I protested.

“And whose fault is that!”

“Help me up,” I said, wiggling to get out of his arms. “I want to see if we can give as well as take.”

“Rachel, we’re trapped!” Al exclaimed. And then someone’s foot hit the edge of the bubble, and it fell.

Light burst over us. I gasped as the Goddess howled in victory, then cowered as a blast of white-hot intent washed over us . . . and fell away. Al grunted in surprise, and I looked up.

Astonishment wreathed the Goddess, looking wrong on her glowing face as shock evolved into understanding. “You cloak yourself in your disharmony,” she whispered, the body she was in staggering back a step.

“Disharmony?” I echoed, looking at Bis, his feet clamped onto Al’s shoulder. There could be no disharmony without lines.

“You’re coated in the cost of perverting my will!” the Goddess said, her expression shifting to a hot anger, and Al began to chuckle. “It will not save you. I will burn it away, and you both will die!”

“Yeah? How much you got, bitch?” Al said boldly, standing up and dragging me with him. “I have a lot of smut.”

“It’s the smut!” Bis said, red eyes wide. “Rachel, it’s smut. She can’t get through it.”

Grimacing, the Goddess cried out, her wails becoming fierce as her fire raced over me and died. Al and I shared an aura—his smut insulated me. His smut?

“Get the rest,” I demanded, hope a bright goad. “Bis, go get the rest. We can do this!”

“Got it,” Bis said, launching himself out the hole the Goddess had made, pinwheeling to avoid her haphazard strikes.

“Al, don’t let her burn me,” I said, going still at a memory. Peter had once asked me to not let him burn. But I wasn’t committing suicide. There was a chance here. Wasn’t there?

“What?” Al said, looking from the Goddess for a brief second before throwing out a hand and blocking her desperate attack. “Rachel?”

“I’m going to need all the mystics she has,” I said, pulse quickening. “I’m going to let her in. See how many I can convert.”

Yes . . . the mystics in me hummed, eager to make a becoming.

“No!” Al shouted, horrified as he understood. “Rachel, it will kill you!”

But there was no other way, and with a deep breath, I dropped the gates to my mind.

She wasn’t expecting it, and I felt the Goddess stumble as I flooded her with myself, setting seeds of my thoughts within her even as I swung out again.

You will be ended! I will not become! echoed in me, and I sent more mystics, knowing they’d be crushed but needing to distract her from the growing cancer I’d set festering within.

I will not become. I will not! she screamed, and I turned my thoughts to where the lines used to hum in my mind like great gates. If I could flood them with energy, just one, the way would be open and I could pull on the flow of energy to open the rest.

Bis, I called, finding his presence riding the chaos, his mind dipping and swooping freely in mine. Where are they?

They won’t come! he thought, his mood chancy as he rose up on the sudden swipe of emotion from the Goddess.

And in my doubt, the Goddess found a small hole in my defenses. I will not become, I will not! the Goddess thought. The other could not make me become, and I will see you gone!

She attacked with savagery, and I writhed in soundless pain as great chunks of myself were dissolved, taken in and swamped by the Goddess. She was eating me alive and I groaned, grasping at anything as memories slipped away, diminishing me.

You will be nothing! she howled, the sound of wings beating at me as she rolled me into nothing. I will remain! I am all. They are mine. All of them!

Fire licked my soul where she tore great chunks of me away. Ice dove deep to fracture what was left and let more fire in. I panicked, feeling myself eaten away, smaller and smaller as I cowered, trying to protect what was left. There was no attack. She had everything. She had it all. I was a fool’s thought, a failure, and she coated me in acid, eating me alive.

“Get off her, you self-absorbed bitch!”

I screamed, the sound real as it echoed in my church. The clean breath of nothing cascaded over me, astringent and biting. I was stripped bare, and I huddled in Al’s arms as the Goddess shouted and fumbled. Her mind had been ripped from mine and was now fighting great swaths of organized thought that had been strengthened beyond reason by insanity.

I blinked, realizing I was actually seeing two figures in my church, swaying back and forth, locked in a glittering sheath of white that rose through the broken roof to the stars.

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“Newt?” I whispered, and Al’s arms around me tightened.

“She was the only one who wasn’t afraid,” Bis said, his leathery tail wrapping about me as he sat on Al’s shoulder.

“I know you!” the Goddess exclaimed, her bitterness harsh as a broken knife. “You’re slow with disharmony. Your smut will bring you down, and I will feast on your thoughts and make them mine again!”

There was a burst of light, and with a gasping groan, Newt fell backward, staring up at the Goddess from the floor. Panting, she wiped the blood from her mouth. “You’re right,” she said, her eyes taking on a dangerous glint. “Rachel, hold this for me.”

Hold what? I thought, then stiffened when the weight of her five thousand years of imbalance and smut fell on me. I floundered, struggling to keep my heart beating. It was everything and everywhere. Dizzy, I couldn’t get enough air as Bis took flight in one panicked swoop. Newt had dumped her smut on me, and I could hardly think.

“Newt!” Al shouted, and I cried out as the sudden vertigo became me hitting the floor. The shock struck through me, and I blearily looked through the hissing glare and darting mystics. Al was gone, really gone! I couldn’t tell who was winning. Newt and the Goddess looked the same, blurring together, becoming one.

But no one was looking at me. Suddenly I realized this was my chance. I could hardly string two thoughts together, but if I could reopen the lines . . .

Think bigger! Newt’s thought echoed in my brain as she saw my intent. The lines are dead. The ever-after is dying. Use what’s left to make a new one! Use the smut and make a new one! How do you think we did it the first time?

A new ever-after? I thought, feeling Bis’s thoughts join mine. From the ashes of the old?

Snarling, Newt fell upon the Goddess, eating through her thoughts even as the Goddess spun about and did the same. They were locked in a spiral like yin and yang, snake eating snake, the balance of becoming held in check as the worlds collided. Flat on my ass, I watched, stunned as the Goddess fought with hatred, and Newt balanced it with a savage confidence, then whipped her thoughts in a dizzying spiral to send the Goddess quailing back until her fear shot spikes of doubt into Newt. Newt patted them out with a dizzying memory of stars and acorns.

No wonder Newt was insane.

“Rachel?”

It was Bis, and I touched his feet as he landed on my shoulder. I could hardly move under Newt’s smut, but my mystics gathered, cleaving to me, hazing my thoughts and expanding my reach. As they fought, I took in the forgotten, the wounded, bolstering them with my energy until the mystics hummed with life and brimmed with need.

Find me a thin spot in the balance of mass, I told them, opening myself. Newt’s smut was more certain than any protection circle. Find me a thin spot in time, I demanded again, and the sound of feathers filled my awareness.

Everything that had been or would be touched every other spot, existed in every time, lay dormant in every being. You just had to know where to look. And I had a thousand eyes today.

Mystics gleefully burrowed through time and space, the sound of their wings piling upon one another until a thin spot in the weft and weave began to fray. I focused on it, made it my all, funneled everything down to that point, that instant, weighing it more heavily than anything else—and with a sudden pop, a wind of thought blew through the spaces between me, sucking nothing into more nothing. I gasped as I felt it widen, expand . . .

And then it vanished and the mystics flooded back to me with images my brain couldn’t comprehend.

It hadn’t happened.

A boom of sound rocked me, and I pulled myself back to reality. Al and Trent stood before the writhing column of what had to be Newt and the Goddess. Power echoed between the walls, straining the glass and bowing out the wood. My skin tingled, and Bis’s grip pinched when a flash of light exploded and Newt tumbled out onto the hard floor.

“It won’t hold!” I shouted, and she turned to me, the Goddess occupied for a moment with Al and Trent. Neither of them needed a line to do their magic. The entire church was glowing with the cast-off power.

“Balance it,” Newt said, staggering upright and fixing her hat. “You need to balance it. If you get enough mass on the other side, it will stay open.”

“With what!” I shouted, but she’d flung herself at the Goddess with a joyous howl.

A sudden pop of high pitch burst the windows. Trent and Al were knocked down and I cowered, Bis’s wings shielding me. The very air was glowing, and I inched back until I hit the wall. Balance it with what? I thought, palms stinging as they found the broken floor. I could hardly think with all this smut.

The smut! I realized suddenly. Smut was intent to pay back an imbalance in reality created by magic. It was a counterweight to reality. It was . . . balance. Newt had given me balance.

“Bis, be ready,” I said, and his grip on me tightened.

“For what?”

“I don’t know!” I cried, focusing my attention entirely on one day, one beautiful thought that had held me. I was. I existed, and I would not be ended so easily!

And the weft and weave parted.

Go! I exclaimed to the mystics, and they went, flooding into the tiny hole I’d made in reality. Newt’s smut pushed me forward, and I gasped as I felt Bis’s thoughts snag mine. His wings beat and he held me firm in this reality as black imbalance pulled over and around me like a shirt over my head, leaving me disheveled and clean. For an instant I watched the new reality quaver, heart in my throat.

And then it began to collapse.

No! I screamed. It would not end like this. It would not!

Hold it open, Rachel! Al shouted in my thoughts, and then suddenly I wasn’t alone. The demons. The demons had come!

Streaks of half-heard emotion flowed past me into the new, still-fragile bubble of thought, etching ley lines with the footprints of their mind as they dove into the new reality, cementing into place new lines to keep it alive.

What? What have you done? the Goddess exclaimed, all our thoughts as one for this moment of time. And then Newt pounced, wrapping the Goddess and her mystics up in the smut that polluted the ever-after. Holding tight to it, she dove into the new reality sparkling in our joined thoughts.

I staggered as the balance shifted. Bis floundered, his emotion back-winging in fear as the pull became too great. Like a great rushing wind it rolled our minds to the abyss, drawing us in as well. Newt! I called, and then with the sudden parting of a leaf from a tree, the connection broke. I was alone.

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My thoughts hit a wall, and reeling, I took a huge breath, trying to figure out what had happened. Real air sucked deep into me, and I coughed out stardust.

“Bis!” I called, but he was with me, his tail wrapped about me and his thoughts twining with mine. New ley lines glittered in our shared mind, singing in perfect balance. The new reality was safe. There were lines again!

The echo of my voice died . . . and nothing rose to replace it. It was silent, and the hush of dust settling whispered over me. My neck hurt, and I shivered in the dark as I looked up to the stars through the gaping hole in the church’s ceiling. There was a new hole in the floor, too. Newt and the Goddess were gone. The mystics, gone. The demons—gone.

Gone? “No,” I whispered, voice raspy as I looked for Al. I couldn’t see him, and I fumbled, falling when I tried to get up. Bis took to the air, landing in front of me with his glowing eyes down in sorrow. They’d thrown themselves into the new reality to balance it out with their smut. It wasn’t fair, damn it! I’d worked so hard. It wasn’t fair! I couldn’t leave them to that hell. Not again! Not now!

“Ivy? Ivy!” Nina cried out, the sound harsh. I was alone, and it hurt.

I collapsed, groaning as I hit the floor. A second crash sounded against my ears, painful and loud. “No, don’t,” I moaned as something hit me, and then I was pulled away, rocked as warm arms held me, soft words tried to pull me back, telling me to never leave, to stay with him always.

“Ivy, wake up! Please, don’t close your eyes. Look at me!” Nina begged, and I managed to open my eyes to see her bending over Ivy. She shook in fear, but her pain-induced savagery was gone, and the first feelings of success began to overshadow my guilt from failure. Al. Newt. What had it all been for?

“I’m okay,” I whispered, and Trent gasped, holding me so tight I couldn’t breathe. I patted his back, smiling as Ivy’s eyes opened. They flashed black, then spun back to her normal brown as she found Nina. The glow of their auras was clear, mixing but not, there but unseen. I could see it, but it faded even as I watched.

Ivy began to cry in joy, and she sat up and held Nina’s face with her hands as she tried to see past her tears. “Your soul is so beautiful,” she sobbed, and they kissed, clinging to each other as if they’d been apart for years and years. But maybe that’s the way it felt. I smiled. It was good. It was just.

But the demons were gone. Newt, Al. All of them. And it hurt.

“Are you sure you’re okay?” Trent said, and I nodded, grief for the demons welling even as I was happy for Ivy. I’d wanted to do so much more. The demons. The familiars in the ever-after. There just hadn’t been time.

“Of course my itchy witch is okay,” Al said, and my head jerked up in the new glow of a handheld lantern to find him bending over us, expression wry. Bis was on his shoulder looking proud and exhausted. He’d broken the lines. The two worlds had collided. We had survived? Where is the Goddess? “Rachel is a pus bucket full of miracles,” the demon added, eyes rolling. “Thank you, Bis. I don’t know these new lines yet.”

“You’re here!” I exclaimed, then hunched into myself, coughing to get rid of the last stardust. Al’s light spell glittered with the clarity of a new sun, almost rivaling the demon’s good mood. He was here, his smut was gone, and his magic glowed with an amazing beauty. “I thought you were sucked into the new reality!”

“We were.” Al set his glowing lamp on the pool table and extended a thick, ruddy hand to haul me to my feet. I felt his strength meet my shaking hand and I rose from Trent’s arms as if being pulled from the water. “It was the only way to get everyone across,” he muttered, as if embarrassed.

“But . . .” I wavered on my feet, scuffing the bits of ceiling laying upon the floor.

Al grinned wickedly and yanked Trent up as well, the fast motion sending Bis to one of the remaining ceiling supports. “You saw us etch the lines to fasten it to reality, didn’t you? You think they only go one way? Stand up. Fix your hair. My God, you still haven’t learned how to dress yourself.”

“But you were trapped,” I mumbled, listing to the right until Trent slipped an arm around my waist. He was grinning. I’d never seen him do that before. Ever. “All of you! Newt and the Goddess!” Fear slid through me and I looked at the hole in the ceiling. “She knows where I am.”

“Don’t worry about her.” Al’s eye twitched. “Newt . . .”

His words trailed off and his head bowed. “Gone?” I echoed, looking over the church as if I might see her, praying I would. “She became, didn’t she. Newt . . .” I couldn’t say it. There was no way that Newt could survive that. She was gone, both Newt and the Goddess destroyed as they became something new. Perhaps it was fitting. Perhaps . . . But I just felt as if I’d lost someone tied to me in more ways than I’d ever know.

Jenks hummed before us, hands on his hips. “Someone better tell me what happened or I’m going to stick my sword into all of you!”

“I think,” Trent said as he lifted me to sit on the edge of the pool table beside Al’s light, “that Rachel made a new ever-after and the demons etched new ley lines to keep it from collapsing.”

“And Newt became the new Goddess,” I whispered, tingles coming from where Trent still held me, refusing to let go. I couldn’t help but wonder how the demons and elves would handle that: The Goddess was a demon?

Trent frowned in consideration as he figured that one out, but Al was clearly pleased, making me think this might be the only way that the demons’ pride would allow them to begin to forget. “I’m going to have my hands full explaining this,” Trent said, and I could see him already planning his next speech.

“Perhaps.” I played with the tips of his ears, and he jumped, his startled eyes meeting mine as I smiled. “But they’re going to listen to you now. I’ll help. It will be easy.”

“Easy,” he muttered, reddening as he took my fingertips and kissed them.

“Must you do that where I can see?” Al harrumphed, but it was all show. “It’s a damn small reality, but far more stable than the one we sang into existence last time. Dali did a last sweep before the collapse, but we might have to let the familiars go.” He winked, putting a finger to his nose. “Just not enough room for them, the undead souls, and whatever gargoyles had been clinging to the memory of their past.”