by Kim Harrison
“Dali,” Trent said cautiously, and the older, somewhat fat demon turned from where he’d been looking at the colorful saltwater fish in the wall tank behind Trent’s desk.
“How very elven,” Dali said softly, eyes flicking behind Trent to Al and Newt. “Keeping all his beautiful captives on display.”
The rims of Trent’s ears went red. “Everything in that tank was captive bred. Nothing came from the wild.”
Simpering, Dali settled himself behind the desk as if it was his. “That makes it worse.”
I could tell Dali sitting at his desk bothered Trent as he rubbed the side of his nose and went to feed the fish, his motions slow as he took a canister of food from a drawer inches from Dali’s foot. “Why are all of you here?” Trent said, his back to everyone as he sifted the food in and the rest of his fish came out of hiding.
Newt settled herself gracefully in the remaining chair, leaving Al and Trent standing. “Last in, last out,” she said cryptically. “Dali’s line was the last formed, so it was the last to go.”
I tried to shift my leg up off the floor, deciding to let it stay where it was when I almost passed out. “What about my line?” I asked when I could think again.
Al harrumphed, fists at the small of his back as he stood before the big vid screen showing an empty paddock at night. “Last line formed while fleeing the ever-after,” he explained. “Which might be why you are able to perform magic, and we can’t.”
“My line still exists?” I said, and Al shook his head. The lines were dead. There was no question as to how I could still do magic, and Dali wasn’t happy—even with Al’s lie as to why.
“Now, Gally,” Newt almost pouted, shifting her robe to hide the welts the makeshift cuffs at the square had given her. “You know that’s not why Rachel was able to do magic.”
“It wasn’t mystics,” Dali growled.
“I didn’t have any choice,” I said in a rush, seeing Al stiffen. “They’re dead. All the lines.”
Oh God, the lines were dead. I hadn’t seen Bis since yesterday. He must be in agony. Ivy was missing, probably in one of Cormel’s bedrooms awaiting my arrival so he could kill her and make me save her soul.
“I have to go,” I said, leg throbbing as I gripped the arm of the chair and lurched to a stand reaching for my crutch. “I have to get back to the church. Trent, I’m sorry, but I can’t do anything, and I need to help who I can.”
“Don’t be stupid.” Newt leaned across the space between us to yank my crutch from me and throw it at Dali. Trent reached to catch it before it hit his fish tank, but Dali was faster, and he glared at Newt as she settled back, pleased with herself for keeping me on the couch and getting Dali’s attention all at once. “Dali, you know as well as I that Rachel’s line went down first. The Goddess hates her. Rachel can do magic because the tiniest mote of mystics are looking to her, swarming her and creating a field she can tap into.” Newt’s eyes rose as she looked speculatively at me. “Filling her chi with wild magic . . .”
I sat back down, pinned to my chair by Dali’s fierce look.
“That is a lie!” Dali insisted, and Newt looked to the ceiling in false idleness.
“Or any she cared to share it with,” Newt finished. “She’s like a little ley line hot spot.”
“Enough!” Dali shouted. Trent inched in between me and the incensed demon, and Newt bobbed her foot like a twelve-year-old, delighted to rub the demon’s nose in something that would get me into trouble and distract Dali from realizing she’d once practiced elven magic, too.
“It’s the mystics, you decrepit old demon,” she said saucily. “The lines are dead, and the ever-after has until sunrise before the tides shift and it’s sucked out of existence, taking everything with it.”
Jenks . . . , I thought, looking at the door but helpless to walk to it. He couldn’t survive long without magic. Bis either. And the vampires. Their souls would have nowhere to go when they died their first death. Something was going to snap.
“You freed the familiars, yes?” Trent asked, and Dali’s expression went sour. “Your slaves? You’re abandoning them?” Trent exclaimed, outraged. “Your contract says you’ll keep them alive. You can’t just forget that because it’s difficult.”
“Difficult?” Dali snapped.
“And the undead souls,” I said aloud, thoughts on Ivy. She’d kill herself twice to keep her soul and consciousness together, even if she believed that would send her soul straight to hell.
Dali leaned forward over Trent’s desk, a thick finger pointing at me. “Failure to uphold any contract here isn’t my fault. I held to the undead curse as well as can be expected.” Lip curled back to show his teeth, he glared at Trent. “You and your species are to blame for the vampires’ soul destruction, not me.”
Soul destruction? I wondered, then pounced on that because it seemed to distress Dali the most. “You promised the first undead that his soul would be waiting, didn’t you? That promise falls to all who followed him. And now you can’t fulfill it.”
“This is not my fault!” Dali shouted, and the fish behind him dashed into hiding.
“You oversaw the curse,” Newt said sourly.
“This is intolerable,” Trent said, beginning to pace. “An entire population of living, breathing people trapped in the ever-after to die?”
Dali laughed, the bitter sound chilling. “Funny. That’s what you had intended for us.”
Trent spun, his anger slipping from his iron-clad control. “It was your idea first.”
Al tugged his suit coat straight. “Because you made slaves of us and warped our children so far from us they were as imbeciles.”
“Hey!” I exclaimed, not wanting to be counted as an idiot from birth. No, I could prove that all on my own.
“Boys and girls,” Newt soothed, her pleasant expression faltering when she noticed a bruise in the shape of a handprint on her arm. “We, ah, have all suffered, and though we clearly cannot forget, can we at least strive to forgive each other such that we can . . . survive?”
Trent turned his back on us, frustrated. “There’s nothing to move forward to,” he said as he looked at his hands to estimate their shaking. “No magic to move forward with. They didn’t listen to me, and now we all suffer.”
My stomach hurt, but my ribs hurt more, and all I wanted to do was lie down and not move. “I’m sorry,” I whispered. “If there was anything that could be done . . .”
“There is, love.”
Dali’s head snapped up at Newt’s soft croon. The demon’s hard, unforgiving expression pulsed through me with a surge of adrenaline.
“Newt,” Al growled as he stood before Trent’s seldom-used wet bar, his shoulders hunched and tense. “Shut the hell up.”
Trent came forward a step. “There aren’t enough mystics looking to her,” he said, but Dali’s vehemence as he thumped a meaty fist on the table brought him up short.
“No!” the older demon shouted. “I’ll not have it! I’d sooner see us dead than be saved with . . . elf magic!”
Newt’s foot bobbed and her cheeks flushed. “Dead is exactly what we will be. Are you blind or simply that stubborn? Demons can do magic through the Goddess. They just don’t like to admit it. They think it sullies them.”
“It does!” Dali cried. “They’re animals!”
Newt simpered. “Aren’t we all, old man. Rachel?”
She extended a slender hand to me, pale and unmarked. I could have sworn that her knuckles had been bruised, and I shied from taking it. Smiling, she turned her reach into a flamboyant gesture. “She’s modest. The girl can do it.”
“No!” Dali exclaimed. “By the two worlds colliding, if I could go back in time, I’d kill her the first time she set foot in my office!”
Al rubbed his forehead before picking up two shot glasses full of an amber something he’d just poured from Trent’s bar. “I know the feeling,” he said, setting one of them on Trent’s desk and giving it a clink before sipping his
.
“Then you’d both be dead three times over already,” Newt said brightly. “You, Dali, are not yet ready to slip from this life, and for all your pissing and moaning, neither are you, Gally. Not like this—whimpering and sniveling, taken out by an elf’s plotting. Rachel can do elven magic. I don’t care if you don’t like it. So can you, so can you all, if you would take that holier-than-thou noose off your necks!”
“Ah, Newt?” I hazarded, but Dali had stood, his face red and frustrated as the already insecure demon came to grips with the fact that he was helpless before a world that wanted to see him dead.
“No more!” the demon bellowed, and Newt stood, robe unfurling.
“You will!” Newt shouted back, and I pressed deeper into the couch. “I have watched your cowardice and unfounded prejudice stain our existence long enough! We share a source of magic with the elves. No wonder they best us time and again when we ignore the source of our strength and take it in the dribs and drabs that exist in tiny pockets.”
“Enough!” Dali shouted, and Newt strode forward to put her face inches from his.
“You will listen!” she exclaimed, her black eyes flashing and a haze of blue rimming her hands.
Dali’s eyes flicked to them and she abruptly backed off, shoulders hunched and eyes down. Al cleared his throat. “This just got a lot more interesting,” he said, and Dali’s confidence came rushing back. “Newt, where are you getting your magic, love?”
Newt grimaced. I gave Trent a shrug, breathing easier when Dali finally found someone else to be mad at.
“Rachel isn’t the only one dabbling in elf magic, eh?” Dali said, clearly disgusted as he pushed back from the desk and stood.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Newt hid her hands in her sleeves. I suddenly felt like two kids having been caught setting off stink spells in the girls’ bathroom. Not that I had experience there—much.
Brow furrowed, Dali took a sip of his drink, not as irate as I would’ve expected. But then Newt was known to be crazy. “You knew about this?” Dali asked Al.
Al shrugged. “I didn’t believe her. How could a demon hide that she and the Goddess—”
Newt’s head came up. “I won’t sit and do nothing as Rachel goes insane trying to hide what she is, what we all are. The Goddess will speak to us, answer us as well.”
“And leave us to die,” Dali said bitterly. “To fight and scratch out an existence when she turns her back on us? No. Never again. She has her favorites and I’ll not be played for a fool once more.”
It was starting to come together, this bitter rivalry between the elves and the demons, and I watched, silent, when Newt, her robes rustling faintly, crossed to where Dali now sat against Trent’s desk, his head bowed as harsh thoughts spun through him.
“You don’t have to,” Newt said softly as she touched his arm.
A haze shifted between them, and Dali looked at his hands, feeling the energy she had given him, filling his chi with a portion of her own. His breath caught as he accepted that there was a way out of this—if he could let go of a lifetime of hatred. “How long have you hidden this?”
Newt turned away. “I don’t remember. So long that the Goddess’s mystics don’t look to find me anymore.”
Her expression was pained, and I started when Trent’s hand landed on my shoulder in support. I knew how she felt, and I imagined that the hurt of losing the exaltation the mystics imparted never dulled with time but only intensified.
Dali looked tired as he shifted his attention to me, eyes flicking listlessly to Trent standing protectively beside me. “You taught her how to hide them as well?” he asked Newt.
“I changed her aura so they can’t easily find her, but Rachel has a newer bond, one they haven’t forgotten yet.” She hesitated. “They’re still looking for her, knowing that the Goddess must become again. Her eyes have seen reality through Rachel, and the need to partake in it has left the rest predisposed to becoming anew.”
Becoming. The Goddess had said that as well, but she’d feared it, as it would destroy her.
“Dali, we can reopen the lines before sunrise with elven magic.”
Trent’s hands on my shoulder tightened. “I’ll rally the dewar and the enclave.”
“No.”
Dali’s word was soft. He never looked up, his mien holding regret as he stood against another man’s desk, in another man’s house, in a world that didn’t want them while the prison they’d desperately tried to escape stood poised to crumble and destroy the very world they wanted to live in but were afraid to.
“You’d have us live like this?” Newt said bitterly, pulling at her clothes as if the tattered and stained remnants were their pride and power. “We can reopen the lines, but it must be done before sunrise. I’ve been talking with the Goddess—”
“What!” Dali’s head snapped up. In the corner, Al clinked several glasses together, and my mouth became dry at the sound of water being poured into them.
Undeterred, Newt lifted her chin. “She’s actively looking for Rachel, but she knows that if the lines stay shut, she’ll have reduced sight. She’s already starving. The only access she has to reality is through failing pixies and Weres who don’t even know she exists. She’s not listening to the elves anymore thanks to Landon tricking her into destroying the lines.”
Interesting, I thought, wondering if this was why elven magic had failed. A tiny wisp of possibility took hold, pulling me straighter in my seat. I could do this, maybe. I had wrestled control of the mystics’ individual power from the Goddess’s will before. Several times before.
And every time, I ended up fighting to disentangle myself from her so my thoughts wouldn’t kill her, change her beyond recognition, make her . . . become something new.
“I cannot live by reality’s rules without magic to make it tolerable,” Al said. “Dali, we have a chance to not only survive, but in the doing, the world will thank us. Perhaps give us a place again.”
“Give us a place?” Dali thundered. “We are demons! We don’t take charity, we take what we want!”
“Well, what I want is to belong!” Al suddenly yelled. “I want to try it this way for a while. What the hell, Dali. If you don’t like it, you can go back to bartering souls to fill your waitstaff, but I think we can do well here with other people’s rules.” He hesitated, eyebrows rising wickedly. “Finding our ways around them. Making them squirm within their own . . . laws.”
Newt’s face was flushed. “But first we need to reopen the lines.”
I held my breath, waiting. There was more being decided here than if we should try to save the ever-after.
“We lack the strength,” Dali said.
“Then we join our strength with the elves.” Newt put her hands on the desk and leaned toward him.
Dali’s disgusted gaze flicked to hers from under a lowered brow. “No,” he growled.
Trent stepped from me, his breath held and color high. His eyes were bright, and he looked like a leader of people even torn and bandaged as he was—maybe because of it. “Why are we even considering not doing this? The dewar is disillusioned with Landon. They’ll listen to me. Let’s reopen the lines and be done with it!”
“Because she lies, elf!” Dali pushed Newt back off the desk with his voice alone. “The Goddess lies! She tricks! She will kill Rachel outright before allowing the lines to be reopened, and then doom the rest of us to a slow, ignoble death to give herself something to play with for another thousand years. The Goddess will not grant power to us to do this even if it expands her reach. She’ll kill us, then do as she will!”
“But we don’t have to rely on the Goddess’s will,” I protested, feeling left out as I leaned forward on the couch. “I can simply take the power we need from her and be done with it! I just need someone to weave the curse and give it direction.” And maybe save my ass afterward.
Dali seemed to freeze, only his eyes moving as he looked at Al first, then Newt. Both of them se
emed to center in on themselves, avoiding him as he slowly gathered his presence. A chill slipped down my spine, but I’d only said the truth.
“The way is that firm already, then?” Dali said, bewildering me even more.
Al’s head bowed, ignoring the question. He looked ill, but Newt’s chin lifted as if taking on a burden.
“Rachel almost caused a new becoming on the Goddess twice now and still managed to extricate herself, saving both their lives. The Goddess will strike her dead on sight, but there will be a span where Rachel is unrecognized, and in the battle for supremacy, Rachel could spin enough magic from her to reopen the lines if we were there to take advantage of it.”
It was what I already knew, but hearing Newt say it made it sound risky.
Dali’s expression was wary. “It would leave her vulnerable to the Goddess’s wrath.”
As if he cared. He was calm, scaring me more than if he had been shouting. “I can handle it,” I said, shaking inside.
“I’ll be there with her,” Newt said, making me feel worse.
“And me,” Trent offered, and I took his hand as he extended it. Seeing us thus, Dali’s expression twisted and he looked away.
Al remained pointedly silent, clearly unhappy. His silence was noted by Dali. Hell, it was noticed by everyone, and he set his glass of ice and liquor down with a sharp snap.
“You both together,” Dali said, lip curling. “With her. Trying to take over the Goddess.”
“It’s what we have,” Trent said loudly.
My heart thudded as I saw the possible end of my days laid before me. “I can’t sit and do nothing if there’s a chance. If this works, magic will be restored, the undead will still have their souls in a parking orbit until they fully die, and the thousands of familiars you’ve got tucked away in the ever-after will still be alive. I’m going to want them to be freed, though.”
