by Kim Harrison
Trent nodded. “If it works, it will give him an in with his kin. Maybe that will be enough. You said they were scared to death of it.”
And so, as both of us sat on the floor of his mother’s office as he must have done sometime in the past while waiting for her to finish her work, I twisted the ring and opened my thoughts. Hodin? I sent out through the private channel the ring afforded.
Nothing. My thoughts were empty.
My lips pressed in annoyance. Hodin, I’m trying to figure out how to mesh two circles into one thick enough to hold the baku. If you don’t help me, I’m going to Dali.
Trent’s head lifted at the faint peal of a bell coming from the lab.
“He’s here,” I said, scrambling up and falling against the desk as a sudden great gust nearly knocked me down. My jaw dropped, and I reached for Trent, pulling him up and out of the way as something big beat the air, its wings brushing the sides of the large office. The lamp fell and the light flashed against the walls and ceiling. Claws scraped on the slate floor, and I strengthened my hold on the ley line, wondering if I should have invoked the circle around the desk.
“What in great green troll turds is that?” Jenks shrilled as he darted in, sword bared.
There were huge bat wings, a long, sinewy neck, and an even longer tail—and then it was gone, vanishing in a wash of pearly white mist to coalesce into the increasingly familiar narrow-shouldered, black-mop-of-hair demon dressed in black silk and leather.
“You can’t mesh two circles into one,” Hodin said, clearly annoyed.
“That was a dragon!” Jenks exclaimed, weaving about until Hodin threatened to flick a tiny ball of magic at him. “You were a dragon? That is so cool. How come Al can’t turn into a dragon?”
“Because he was never enslaved to a decrepit, psychotic elven priest who enjoyed pitting wolves against larger prey,” Hodin said bitterly, and Jenks’s dust dulled, his wings tickling my neck as he landed on my shoulder. “Excuse me a moment. Your goyle and I were sporting in the wind. He’s worried about you. The Goddess knows why.”
“Bis?” I said, startled. “It’s daylight. What were you doing with my gargoyle?”
“I told you. Sporting in the wind.” Hodin seemed to hesitate, and I recognized that vacant look as him talking silently to someone. Then Bis popped into the room, startling me.
“Rachel,” the kid said breathlessly as he oriented himself and flew to me, his red eyes wide and that no-doze amulet around his neck. “Hodin took me flying.” He landed, bird light, on my shoulder, his tail lying across my back and wrapping around my opposite arm. “I didn’t know the updrafts were so amazing during the day. Where are we? Trent’s?” He grinned at Trent, wide and toothy. “We’re behind the waterfall, aren’t we?”
“Yea-a-ah.” I frowned, not liking Hodin’s scrutiny—as if I were a bad gargoyle mom for not taking him flying during the day. “I’m sorry, Bis. I didn’t know that you wanted to fly in the sun.”
“It’s okay,” Bis said, but his tail didn’t ease its grip. “Neither did I until I did it.”
“You really don’t deserve him,” Hodin said, and I wondered if he was jealous. He sniffed, tugging his elegant robes as he gazed at the books. “Where are we?”
“My mother’s spelling lab,” Trent said. “My father bricked up her rooms after she died.”
Hodin leaned to look at the rug. “It smells of Brimstone.”
“You noticed that, too?” I said as I sat against the edge of the desk.
“You’re Hodin, yes?” Trent said, his usual upright pose beginning to reassert itself. “I’ve held to our agreement and not told anyone about you.”
“Hence, you still breathe.” Hodin stared at the bricks behind the sliding-glass door, curious.
“Are you two done yet?” I said as I righted the desk lamp, and Jenks snickered.
Hodin’s red, goat-slitted eyes found me, narrowing as if smelling something rank. “Your goyle is right to be worried about you,” he said as he looked me up and down to leave my skin crawling. “You were stupid. I can see it in your aura. You tried to talk to it,” he accused.
“Uh . . .” I moved from the desk, taking a step sideways as Hodin reached for me. Bis’s tail tightened, and Jenks was suddenly between me and the demon.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa, Home Slice,” Jenks said, wings clattering. “No touchy.”
Hodin dropped back, his hands politely clasped before him, but that prickly feeling was tripping over my skin again as he examined my aura. “You’ve damage in your outermost shells,” he accused, and Bis’s wings shifted nervously against me.
“I’m fine,” I said, then exhaled in relief when Hodin turned his scrutiny to Trent.
“You’re not fine, unless the meaning of fine has changed in the last two thousand years.” Hodin squinted at Trent. “Your aura looks as thin as your elven consort’s has been eaten to.”
My lips parted as I remembered what the baku had said. “You’ve been fielding attacks?” I accused, and Trent’s expression became irate. “And didn’t tell me?”
“What good would it have done?” Trent’s voice was tight in his throat. “You would have told me to stay out of it. That I’m a businessman and to let the professionals do their job.”
“Damn straight,” Jenks said as he hovered before us, and I softened.
Trent had been told to be “the businessman” all his life, but it wasn’t what he wanted and I knew how that felt. Grimacing, I waved my hands in defeat, forgiving him even as I decided we were going to have to come to some understanding about not keeping things from each other.
“Touching,” Hodin mocked, but his attention was on the books. “And typical. Your elf is bad for you, Rachel. But most of them are. Bad, I mean.”
Bis’s grip tightened, and I put a hand on his feet. I didn’t like Hodin talking trash about Trent, either. “It was my idea,” I said, tracking Hodin as he went to the bookshelf. “And the intent was that Trent talk to it, not me.”
“You can’t talk to a baku without risking enormous damage,” Hodin said, and the pitch of Jenks’s wings increased until my teeth hurt.
“Which would have been nice to know before I did it,” I said, tired of feeling stupid.
“Why do you think I procured the no-sleep amulets for you?” Hodin said, clearly disappointed when he saw they were only textbooks. “You invited that elven abomination to strip you down to where it will take very little to overcome you.”
Bis gasped, and I gave his feet a reassuring pat. Damn it, why is he being so blunt when Bis is right here, listening? “You need to shut up,” I said, and Hodin turned from the shelf, his goat-slitted eyes wide. I glanced sideways at Bis on my shoulder, and the demon’s lips pressed.
“Fortunately for you it will heal in time,” Hodin added, but the damage had been done, and Bis’s grip became painfully tight.
“Rachel, ask him if he’ll help or not,” Trent said, sounding tired.
Hodin hesitated while reaching for a book, his fingers curling under as if it might harm him. “Circles can’t mesh together. That they’re separate and distinct is their entire form and function.”
“My mother and Quen did it once,” Trent said. “But it didn’t hold.”
“Pre-e-e-cisely,” Hodin drawled.
“Rachel says the baku remembers them losing control when they shrank it down to drop it into a bottle.” Trent moved to stand behind his mom’s desk, looking as if he wanted to sit in her chair but didn’t dare. “If they did it, we can do it.”
Hodin tapped a book as if expecting a shock, and when nothing happened, he pulled it from the shelf. “As I said, you can’t do it. But even if you could mesh your circles, a bottle won’t hold it,” he said as he thumbed through it. “Even glass has space between the particles it’s made from.”
“But demons hold souls all the time,”
I said. “Al has at least three. Or he did,” I said, not sure how much he’d saved when the original ever-after shrank to a singularity and vanished.
“The baku isn’t a soul,” Hodin said, expression holding old anger. “It’s energy. Only another form of energy, such as a soul, can hold a baku.”
“I still say if we can get it in there, a soul-bottle spiral will confuse it, keep it contained,” Trent said patiently. “I kept Rachel’s soul contained for three days while her body healed from her fight with Ku’Sox.”
“Rachel’s soul is not a baku,” Hodin said distantly. And then he hesitated, turning with that book splayed open on his long-fingered hand. “He really put your soul in a bottle? For three days?”
Both Bis and I nodded, the gargoyle’s white-tipped ears pricked in hope. “He modified the elven curse that moves the souls of dewar leaders into newborns,” I said, my thoughts going back to the baby bottle I’d found in Trent’s safe room. He kept it in the safe room. But if Trent’s gut feeling was right, it held a reflection of my soul, and like all magic, it could be lifesaving in the hands of those you trust, and life ending in the hands of those you don’t.
“That is a particularly nasty elf charm,” Hodin said, then snapped the book shut to make Jenks, perched on the desk lamp, slip dust in surprise. Slow in thought, Hodin replaced the book and turned. “You might be able to contain the baku in a bottle that held your soul for three days. A demon tends to leave a shadow of his soul on the body that contains it. A much-needed evolutionary trait to keep a demon intact when he shape-shifts or travels the lines. But you still can’t get it in there. You’d need two people with identical auras to even hope to mesh circles.”
“So shift my aura to look like Trent’s,” I said, and Hodin shook his head.
“Even with your twisting pentagon, I can only see your outermost shells. At your core, you are as different as fish and birds. You will fail,” Hodin predicted, and on my shoulder, Bis slumped.
“Unless . . .” Hodin’s lips pressed in thought.
“Unless what?” I said, and Hodin’s attention flicked up. “Unless what?” I said again, not liking how he was frowning at Trent. “You got something or not?”
“Um, it’s old magic,” Hodin said, and Jenks’s humming wings stilled as he landed on Bis’s shoulder. A gentle heat began to emanate from him, and I encouraged Bis to park it on the desk instead of on me.
“How old?” I asked, not seeing anything wrong so far.
“From when I was a slave,” Hodin admitted, shooting Trent a baleful look. “Its intent isn’t to protect but to equalize the energy balances between demons and elves so that no one gets hurt.”
Energy balance? I thought, puzzled. As in a power pull? “A demon sex curse?” I blurted, and Hodin flushed as Bis giggled, sounding like rocks in a blender.
Unfazed, Trent raised a finger in question. “Ah, how does a curse created for pleasure lend itself to being able to merge our circles?”
“It blurs your auras into one unique expression.” Hodin glared at Jenks as he whispered in Bis’s white-tufted ear to make the kid snort. “Which in turn facilitates an equal balance of power between a demon’s naturally higher carrying capacity and an elf’s higher resistance to ley line energy.”
“Oh.” Arms crossed, I sat back against the desk again, Bis and Jenks on one side, Trent on the other. Such a curse would allow for toe-curling sex without the fear of accidently frying your partner with line energy. It didn’t surprise me that the elves had found a way to even the playing field. That demons could hold more line energy than elves had always been a sore point. Trent and I didn’t even play with line energy when, er, playing. “How come Al doesn’t know it?” I asked.
“Because he wasn’t in an elven harem for a thousand years,” Hodin said bitingly, and I winced. “But don’t worry. I can guarantee the curse won’t instill any desire. The aura blending is a side effect,” he added. “The baku won’t be able to find you for at least thirty-six hours. If nothing else, you could get some sleep. Maybe shower and clean up. You both look like paupers.”
Sleep. I looked at Trent, seeing his weariness on him like a mask. Even if we couldn’t master blending our circles into one, sleep would be most welcome. “We’ll do that,” I blurted, and Bis nodded, clearly in favor of it.
“And in return, we will continue to give you our silence that you exist,” Trent said.
I jerked to a wary stiffness, pushing from the desk and waving my hand. “Hold up,” I said as Hodin bristled. “No. I’m not agreeing to that. I’m not blackmailing Hodin. I’m sorry, Hodin. This is not what we discussed.” Hand on my hip, I turned to Trent, utterly mortified. “What are you doing?” I almost hissed.
Trent brushed nonexistent dust from his nonexistent sports coat. “Bargaining.”
“No, you’re pissing him off,” I said, shooting Hodin an apologetic glance. “Would you mind if I handled it?” I asked, and Trent gestured in an obvious “Be my guest.”
I faced Hodin, suddenly unsure. He looked ready to walk away. I didn’t blame him after that. “Helping us capture the baku will give you a solid in with your kin. It’s in your best interests.”
Hodin eyed the rings on his hand. “No. They will ignore my efforts as they always have. I want you to stand beside me. Stand up and say no when they try to bury me in a hole again, embarrassed at the things I did to survive.”
I knew all about breaking the rules to survive, and with a few misgivings, I nodded. “Okay. You’ve got a deal. Trent, tell him you’ll stand up for him before the demon collective.”
Hodin’s arms dropped and he stared at me in surprise. “Okay?” he said, his goat-slitted eyes wide in the desk lamp’s light. “Do you have any idea how much they hate me for swimming in a pool they’re too afraid to dip a toe in?”
“Probably more than they hate me for existing,” I said, and Trent frowned.
“Rachel . . . ,” he cautioned, but Hodin hadn’t asked for a demon mark, or my firstborn, or even a date. He’d asked me to stand up for him. It was something I was probably going to do anyway. Eventually. God, I’m such a bleeding heart for wild cosmic powers on the skids.
“Blackmailing him is safer,” Trent insisted, but when I gave him a look of disbelief, he pinched the bridge of his nose, knowing he was beat. “Twist your curse,” he said. “We will both stand beside you if the demon collective should come against you for your past transgressions.”
Smirking, Hodin flung an expansive hand. Energy seemed to crawl over me, and both Bis and I jumped, my head swiveling to see what had changed. But the only thing that had was Hodin, and his tall, dark-haired presence was now lost behind a threadbare spelling robe that might have once been red. His eyes narrowed at my questioning look, and then he turned away. He had such nice spelling robes, why he was slumming it now was beyond me.
The inkpot he took from the ratty folds of his robe made me even more nervous. It looked old, pinched together, not thrown on a wheel. I’d used ink that wasn’t ink before, and I was willing to bet that whatever was in it was nothing I’d seen before. “If you’d remove your shirt, Rachel?” Hodin said as he set the pot on the desk with an attention-getting click.
“Whoa, what?” I said as Jenks’s wings clattered and Bis swished his tail tip in uncertainty.
“Just what kind of a curse is this?” Trent asked, clearly uneasy.
Hodin set a paintbrush beside the pot of ink instead of a stylus. “One that has to be applied,” he said dryly. “You may drape yourself for modesty, but I need access to your back.”
“Fair enough,” I said, not willing to let our bargain fall apart because of showing a little skin. And before Trent could protest, I went to the couch, spun to put my back to them, and pulled my sweater and chemise up and over my head in one motion. The cold touched me, and I hunched, very aware of the both of them as I pulled the silken knitted thr
ow from the couch and draped it around my neck to leave my back bare. It smelled like Quen, and I stifled a frown. Once a year, huh?
When I turned, Hodin was politely focused on his paintbrush as Trent squinted mistrustfully at him. Jenks stood with his hands on his hips with Bis, and the small gargoyle was glowing an embarrassed ruddy color. Hodin held the inkpot, the tiny thing almost lost in one hand, the other holding the brush. It didn’t look as if he’d picked it up at the dollar store, and I wondered if the brush was made of his hair.
“Try not to twitch,” Hodin said as he moved to stand behind me. “The pattern is not one you will forget. Ever.”
“What’s the ink made of?” I asked as I gathered my hair and pulled it forward and out of his way. “Is it blood?” I added when he didn’t answer.
“It’s plant based, as is the brush,” Hodin said stiffly, clearly loath to say more. “I’ll leave it with you both, and if you can do it correctly upon your elf, I’ll tell you what it is.”
“How can I do it correctly if you don’t tell me how?” I complained, and then I jumped, breath catching when the brush touched me. It was like a ley line itself, burning with an icy heat as he painted from my right shoulder down my back, curving to my left and rising in a smooth arc just above the small of my back. I shuddered as the sensation multiplied upon itself. I could hardly stand it, that deliciously tantalizing itch you can’t reach, and I put a hand to the desk for balance.
“Tap a line,” Hodin muttered, and I did, gasping when the excess magical intent that had been building up in me spilled away to leave only a hint of connection.
“You’re communing with the Goddess,” I breathed, and Trent’s expression went empty.
“Be still,” Hodin muttered, his voice tight behind me, and I heard Bis’s leathery wings shift. “I’m not talking to her. You are. Be still and listen.”
But he was communing with her, even if the words he began to chant were unfamiliar. My shoulders slumped, then tightened as he continued to paint the curse onto me, each shift of motion sending jolts of tingles through me. Suddenly I realized the curse was being carried into me by ley line and paint and song, all soaking into me much as smoke from a distant fire taints the grapes on the vine and turns them rank.
