Hell's Hinges

by S. M. Reine

  His jaw dropped. “Seriously?”

  She understood his confusion. The Historian didn’t go outside the wards. There were millions of witches, demons, and angels who could invade and shatter her mind from a distance, should they desire it. Sophie used to fear these things before she’d woken from Genesis in the Summer Court, before she’d traveled from one end of the country to the other with the companionship of Lincoln Marshall. There was no fight that couldn’t be fought, and she was unafraid.

  “Let’s go,” she said, grabbing his arm.

  Omar held firm, as immobile as the mountain he resembled. “What’s gotten into you?”

  “It’s difficult to explain,” Sophie said. “I want to explain, but—”

  “Is it the baby?”

  “The hormones make me ill, but they haven’t rendered me a fool. I want to go outside the wards and make sure nobody else was with it.”

  “Then I’ll look for you.”

  There was simply no negotiating with him. The Historian did not go outside the wards.

  Omar bent to kiss her, and she felt strange permitting it, even though they had kissed a thousand times before. He looked too young.

  Sophie waited until he was around the corner before hopping onto her toes to look through the window again. The cell was dark inside, and the air drifting through the bars was chilly. “Are you alive?” Sophie whispered.

  The Traveler’s head lifted from its arms. Blood was crusted on its upper lip, and the bottom lip was split. A bruise was developing alongside its jaw and ran all the way to its temple. “This is Lincoln Marshall’s fault.”

  Sophie leaned her forearms against the window, chin resting on her wrists. “Before we begin assigning blame for our mishaps in time travel, you could consider who insisted that we travel in the first place.”

  The Traveler rose. It was steady on its feet despite the amount of blood spattered on its white clothes. It approached the door, wiped off its upper lip, and surveyed Sophie’s young face. “You should consider who wanted to get laid at the expense of the universe.”

  “Does it seem fair to you?” Sophie asked. “That I should be punished for a single youthful transgression?”

  “Your transgression was failing to end it when you could have,” The Traveler said.

  “We can still fix it,” she said. “If you know where Lincoln is, we can fix it.”

  “There’s a faster solution.” Suddenly, its hand was on Sophie’s wrist, holding her so tightly that it felt like the bones might snap. Its other hand was holding a small knife. “There can only be one Historian at a time. Open my door. I’ll cut the mistake out of your womb and fix this now.”

  The wards leaped and sizzled, and the Traveler was thrown from the door with a cry.

  Her heart was still pounding from the sight of a blade in its hand. The wards wouldn’t let the prisoner hurt Sophie, but it was not so long since she had been held at the Traveler’s mercy, and she still feared its wrath in a primal way.

  Except that it hadn’t looked wrathful when threatening to cut the baby from her womb. It hadn’t even seemed to be threatening, really. It had been an offer.

  I can cut the baby from your womb. This can be over now.

  She felt a stirring. She pressed her hand against her belly, just under her left ribs, and felt something press back. Heat pricked her eyes.

  It was easy to forget that she came from the future when every one of her senses told her that she was back in the past, as though the decade to follow had been naught but an elaborate dream. Her mind felt like it was sliding toward its former state. She wanted to return to her studies, chronicling the corners and crags of her Historical information, and training to develop her various skills.

  But this. This was something she had done before, chasing her baby’s heels across the skin as the little life form squirmed within her womb.

  This was something she would never forget.

  No. Any version of the universe that involved undoing her daughter was a universe unworthy of existing.

  The Traveler’s voice echoed down the hall as Sophie hurried back upstairs. “You know I’m right! You’re going to come back!”

  Since falling pregnant, Sophie had noted a steady decline in her stored knowledge. She’d lost entire swaths of information in the first twelve weeks and lost exponentially more in the last trimester. It had taken her until the baby’s birth to admit to Omar that she had forgotten some of the oldest information in her brain. By her due date, she’d even lost the ability to perform certain magic.

  In the middle of her pregnancy, Sophie was midway through her loss of Historical knowledge. She’d found ways around the holes and how to summon fading memories before they were gone. She’d often meditated in the wattle and daub hut beside the lake’s shore. The walls were lined with focus crystals. The candles never went out. It always smelled of chrysanthemum.

  It was there she settled, folding her legs upon a cushion to light incense and a circle of candles.

  Sophie reached out to the wards surrounding the farm. This magic was old, but easy to read. When Sophie focused, magic was only a language, read as easily as the thousands of books in the farm. She was fluent in all three languages—ethereal, infernal, and gaean. The wards used fibers of them all.

  She sought each layer of wards, pulling the threads apart to view them individually. Nothing looked like it could prevent temporal magic. In fact, there was no obvious reason why the Traveler shouldn’t have been able to travel within the farm. Whatever kept it contained in the cell didn’t extend to the rest of the farm. That simply meant that Sophie needed to break the Traveler out in order to travel.

  She peered out her door again, reassuring herself that Omar wasn’t in this part of the farm. The hallway was empty.

  Sophie easily found her way to the spelltower where they kept the soul links sustaining the wards. The room was in the highest tower of the farm, atop the grain mill overlooking the greenhouses. Beyond the windows, she saw the illusion of blue sky and rolling plains. When she was in the fields, she could even feel the sun on her back as though it were real. It was impossible to feel confined when such care had been put into giving Sophie outdoors-like places to wander.

  Confined or no, Sophie still had endless time on her hands, and she had spent hours in the warding room figuring out which soul links she could muss with, and which she couldn’t.

  Soul links were among the most powerful binding magic ever invented, primarily because it required sacrifice and commitment. She had to spill blood annually to maintain her wards, and her guardians did the same for the other links. Sophie could alter any of the soul links that ‘belonged’ to her without alerting Omar.

  The shields mounted above a hauberk were tied to Tristan, the lead guardian in the Brotherhood. Tristan would feel it if Sophie touched them. She had discovered this when she was eight years old and pulled down a shield. She escaped admonishment by saying that she’d wanted to play with it, but truthfully, Sophie had only been testing his reaction time. (Approximately thirty seconds.) Sophie felt nervous even looking at them.

  But Tristan had a few rocks on a shelf that could be moved without triggering alarms. Sophie picked up a large amethyst, heavy enough that she needed both hands to lift it, and then discarded it. “Hardly portable,” she murmured.

  She selected a tiger’s eye that sang to her at a touch. It was small enough to fit in one palm. It tugged playfully at the wards when she lifted it from the shelf, and Sophie sensed mischief in the magic.

  “Here we go,” she said. “You’ll do.”

  Sophie swirled her fingers around it, marking it with her energy. Then she wrapped ribbons from her waist pouch around it until every millimeter was covered.

  The wards that it anchored withdrew from the farm, squeezing tightly and neatly into the rock.

  She checked outside the window. The blue sky had a patch of violet near the horizon, just beyond a grove of mango trees. That was a hole in the ward
s. “Perfect,” Sophie whispered, brushing her lips over the wrapped tiger’s eye. “Give me as much time to get away before alerting Tristan, will you?”

  She wasted little time stealing down to the basement one more time.

  The Traveler was waiting on the other side of its cell door, as if it hadn’t moved since she left.

  “I knew you would be back,” the Traveler said.

  “I will not assent to my child being murdered,” she said. “If we find Lincoln, can we try to walk further back again? Do another ritual to take us all the way to the last genesis?”

  “Once I’m healed, yes. It’s going to take days before I’m strong enough.”

  “Can you find Lincoln in the meantime?” Sophie asked.

  “I can find where he and his companion landed.”

  Sophie licked her lips and glanced back, up the hallway. She neither saw nor heard Omar. It was a full kilometer to escape the basement and reach the mango grove, and the tiger’s eye was humming in her bag. She turned back to the Traveler. “Can you run?”

  6

  B etty took bare moments to pack for the trip to Lake Tahoe. The weather was warm, and in her own words, she planned on being “basically as naked as the coven will put up with” for the entire weekend. “We’ve got two cabins on a private beach for the coven,” she explained. “We don’t have to worry about anyone calling the cops on us.”

  She was in the front passenger seat of a Jeep, which she’d borrowed from her out-of-town cousin. Betty’s nudity chatter made it all the more jarring to have Elise’s eagle eyes watching Lincoln through the rearview mirror. Her irises reflected a bottle green, though he’d already stared at her enough to know that was just the lighting here. Her eyes were actually hazel.

  Elise might have been staring at Lincoln, but she talked to Betty on the drive across town. “So, the firm sends me to audit this real estate agency, right? But they didn’t tell the Realtors that I was coming, so they tried to kick me out,” Elise said.

  “Ooh, that’s a mistake,” Betty said.

  “Their last mistake.”

  “You didn’t kill the guards, did you?” She jokingly prodded at Elise with her pointer fingers. Tickling, playful, but still clearly aware that Elise was dangerous on some level.

  Elise swatted Betty’s hands away. “I didn’t even break any bones.”

  “This time,” Betty said.

  “But I’m also not allowed back at that office,” Elise finished.

  Lincoln was mostly numb, whipped by wind in the back seat. He kept catching glimpses of Junior high in the clouds, but it did nothing to reassure him. If anything, he felt worse. He should have left Elise and Betty so that he could meet Junior alone. Instead, he just kept watching Elise’s auburn curls bounce against her shoulders, her lips tug with smiles for Betty, her gloved hands resting on the steering wheel.

  It can’t really be her . Elise never looked so freckled and smiling. She didn’t laugh with girlfriends.

  “So you’re an accountant?” Lincoln asked, unable to keep quiet.

  “An intern,” Elise said. “I won’t graduate for a few more semesters.”

  “We’re both late starts to college. We made friends in order to protect ourselves from the tiny baby freshman straight out of high school.” Betty tossed a grin at Lincoln over her shoulder. She wore enormous sunglasses that made her look halfway between an insect and a movie star. To Elise, she said, “Linc is a grad student like me, but he’s in theology.”

  Elise’s eyes fell on Lincoln again. Neutral expression.

  As a demon, she had ripped the crucifix from around his neck. Bitten the words from his mouth when he’d uttered the name of God. Offered to drink his blood one minute and described herself as the Godslayer the next. She wasn’t impressed by a theology degree in this or any other era.

  “I’m also studying criminal justice,” he added, his mouth dry.

  “The two don’t go together,” Elise said.

  “I’d say they’re an intuitive match.”

  A snort. “There’s no justice in religion.”

  “That’s all there is to religion,” Lincoln said. “God’s plan is all about justice.”

  Her face had gone from neutral to chillingly blank. They’d stopped at a red light and she hadn’t blinked once while staring at him.

  “Oh, come on, don’t scare him.” Betty playfully nudged Elise again, then whispered to her. Lincoln couldn’t make out all the words, but it was something along the lines of “really good at moving furniture.”

  The light turned green. Elise returned her attention to the road.

  They turned a corner by a park—Idlewild, according to the signage—and pulled into a parking lot a half-block down. All the spaces were occupied so Elise stopped the Jeep crookedly by the sidewalk.

  “Morrighan is already here!” Betty launched herself out of the Jeep without bothering to open the door. She tackled a long-haired brunette on the sidewalk with almost as much enthusiasm as she’d had for Elise.

  Elise stepped out of the driver’s seat at the same moment that Lincoln hit pavement, bringing them face-to-face. Her eyes were indeed hazel. That scar splitting her eyebrow was a lot starker when she had a tan—an actual tan, meaning that she had been out in sunlight repeatedly, deliberately, for protracted lengths of time. Behind her ears, her loose curls turned to feathery down. And Lincoln almost wanted to think of her expression as innocent.

  “What are you looking at?” Elise asked. Her tone got a lot colder when Betty wasn’t around.

  “Sorry,” Lincoln said. “You, uh…surprised me.”

  She didn’t back up. Didn’t blink. “Are you nervous?”

  That wasn’t the word Lincoln would have used for the fluttering deep in his stomach, like spiders weaving acid webs between his ribs. “I might be a mite shy, ma’am. I only just met Betty, and now I’m meeting all her friends. I’m not used to going that fast.”

  “We’re used to it. Betty likes to pick up special projects. She’s nice.”

  He swallowed hard. Elise’s eyes fell to his throat, watching his Adam’s apple bob. He remembered how she used to watch his throat as if thinking about how it would taste to bite open its jugular. “And what are you?” Lincoln asked.

  “Protective,” she said. “Should be a fun weekend as long as you’re good to Betty.” She slid the sunglasses out of her hair, put them over her eyes, and turned to greet the rest of the coven.

  Lincoln remembered how to breathe eventually.

  Human or demon, Elise was a lot of presence for a woman her size, and being dressed professionally didn’t do much to conceal the bulk of her muscles. As a human, Elise had been almost as ripped as Lincoln, and probably twice as strong. That was what it meant to be a kopis—a legendary demon hunter with improved strength, reflexes, and senses. Elise had been one of the only woman kopides before she got changed into a demon.

  Wind stirred. Lincoln felt the weight of emotions at the back of his neck.

  He turned to see a hulking figure behind the neighbor’s garage, using the trash bins to conceal his body. Lincoln slipped away from everyone else. He made sure he was out of sight before hissing, “Junior?” The gargoyle’s head lifted over the trash. He didn’t emerge. It was a bright day, and this close to the river, most homes likely had security cameras. “Did you find Sophie?”

  Junior shook his head.

  Inanna stepped out wearing a scowl that made Lincoln feel two inches tall. “It’s taking too long for you to escape this place. I’m going to search further and wider. I’m going to find a way back.”

  “Do you mean Junior’s going to expand his search?” Lincoln shifted to see behind Inanna, meeting Junior’s gaze. The gargoyle nodded. “I’m all right with that. I’ve got my own lead to finding Sophie—or at least, I’ve found someone who can help. There’s someone here.” He swallowed hard and cleared his throat. “Elise Kavanagh is here. She’s—important, and I don’t know how to tell you how, but she’s a bi
g deal. She can find Sophie. She can help us.”

  “I shouldn’t be here,” Inanna said.

  “You’re not helping,” he snapped.

  Inanna vanished.

  Lincoln stepped through the trash to pat Junior on the shoulder. “So, we’re good, right? I’ll try to get Elise’s help, and you’ll keep searching. We’ll meet in twelve more hours.” Junior shook his head. “Come on, man, don’t argue with me. I know what I’m doing. Don’t you trust me?”

  Finally, the gargoyle nodded.

  Lincoln left. He had to trust that Junior could get in and out of the neighborhood unseen—that was the gargoyle’s problem. Lincoln’s problem had auburn hair shining red where sunlight struck, her arm looped with the arm of a beautiful blond. He was too distracted to notice the curtains on the second floor of Motion and Dance stirring. Too distracted to see the eyes that had seen him. And much too distracted to feel the whine of a timeline shifting in all the wrong ways.

  Betty’s coven met on the lawn in front of Motion and Dance. Lincoln didn’t recognize any of them. Whatever had happened to Betty’s old coven in Reno, they hadn’t followed Elise into her future. Nobody seemed surprised to see Lincoln instead of Asshole Mark, so they didn’t even ask who he was or where the other man had gone. He only picked up on the witches’ names when they came up in conversation: Windsong, Phoenixfire, Radagast, Morrighan. There was also a Molly, who must have felt absurd with her boring name around the others.

  Yet there was one other outsider—someone who, like Lincoln, was standing back instead of greeting the others.

  The newcomer was as tall as Lincoln, and that was where the resemblance ended. He had his hair tied back in a ponytail that ran all the way down his back. His skin was fair but not white, and his eyes had the squinty look of an Oriental guy. Chinese guy , Lincoln mentally corrected. Sophie had taken up mental residence and was yelling at him for being racist.

  Wherever the hell he came from, this new guy was looking right at Lincoln. Amusement played over the outsider’s lips, as if he could read Lincoln’s thoughts.