Hollows 11 - Ever After (22 page)

“He made you
think
it was your idea.” Pierce pleaded, “Don’t trust him. He’s a Kalamack!”

“He . . .” I started, not knowing where I was going with my argument. Pierce had said I’d found someone new to love, and Trent wasn’t it, but to say so sounded like I was protesting my way into a bag of truth. “There’s no reason I can’t work with him,” I said belligerently, making a fist to hide Trent’s pinkie ring. “Ku’Sox stole Ceri and his daughter. I can trust his hate.”

There was a small circle on the floor where I’d popped in, and I stood in it, waiting for his help to get out of here. Nothing like needing an ex-boyfriend to slam your door for you as you make your dramatic exit.

“But he will spoil you, Rachel,” Pierce said, and I stared until I realized he meant ruin, not overindulge. “He’ll turn your heart hard and you will become as him. A shallow, self-indulgent shell of what you are now. Don’t trust him. Let me help you. I have an arsenal. We can destroy Ku’Sox together. Right now. This very hour. Your strength and my charms. Our magics blend so well. With those rings, we can make a fist of it for sure!”

I looked him up and down, not surprised. “The rings are not for attack, they’re a safety net for fixing the line. You keep telling me that Trent is going to change me, but you’re the one who keeps trying to get me to kill everyone!”

“But it needs to be done,” he insisted, and I crossed my arms over my chest.

“Send me to the mall, please,” I said tightly. “I appreciate your help more than you will ever know.”

“Rachel.”

It was stifling, and I brought my attention down from the ceiling. Pierce stood before me, looking capable and strong, with his curls about him and his eyes promising me success. I remembered how thick his circle had become and imagined the skills he’d been honing since becoming Newt’s familiar. Had she been training him for this? “Can you leave Newt’s rooms without being detected?” I asked, already knowing the answer.

His head dropped. “No.”

My posture eased and my anger vanished. “I’m sorry, Pierce,” I said, touching his arm. “You’ll jingle like bells in the forest, and I have to move with stealth. You’ve given me a tool that I didn’t have before.
I can do this
. Thank you.”

Jaw tight, he looked up, hearing the truth in it.

“Do you need anything?” I asked, not wanting to leave like this.

“Only that which you can’t give. And I will not ask for it.”

Yep, that’s about what I thought. Sick at heart, I shifted foot to foot. “I have to go.”

A savage light lit through his eyes, and his chin lifted. “Wait, there is one thing.” Moving close, his expression became almost taunting. “Let me kiss you good-bye, for if fate allows that I see you again, you will not be you anymore.”

“Pierce . . .” I whispered, but he’d taken both my shoulders and pulled me close. My breath caught, and as our lips touched, he filled my soul with the memory of his love. Tears warmed my eyes, and I didn’t pull away, wanting just for a moment this perfect spot of what we might have had. Our auras, already sensitized to each other, mixed with swirls of pinpricked energy, sparking over our skin as our lips moved against each other, and his hands pressed into me with the memory of what had been.

Slowly he let go, and I wiped my eyes with the back of my hand, not ashamed for my tears. I could have loved him, but he demanded too much.

“I’m not going to change,” I said, meaning several things at once.

Chin high, he let go and stepped back. “Elves are more evil than demons. They warp you to suit their needs and make you think it was your idea. You will always be in my heart, Rachel Morgan. Go, before my foul jailer comes back.”

“Pierce.”

He turned away and gestured. “Go.”

I vanished, seeing him standing in a spot of sunlight that never moved, alone and apart, but wanting more.

I am not becoming Trent’s tool,
I thought as I misted back into existence at the fountain and the trite sound of synthesizers and cheerful lyrics beat on me. I was making my own decisions, not Trent’s. Pierce was seeing the world through ancient glasses.

But as I pushed past the few meandering demons in search of the coffeehouse, I couldn’t dispel a faint whisper of warning.

Chapter Thirteen

C
ool and carrying the hint of rain, the night wind pushed against me, sporadically sending my hair to tickle my neck. It brought to me the smell of early lilac and the sound of spring frogs and running water. Far in the distance was the sound of interstate traffic, barely a whisper. Behind me, Loveland Castle loomed dark, empty, and forbidding. Trent’s snazzy black sports car sat parked in the dirt lot. My car was still at his gatehouse. The light from the camp lantern on the retaining wall behind me barely made it to the surrounding forest stretching around us—just far enough to make the place feel creepy.

Edgy, I shifted my feet into the gravelly scree of the lower garden path as I stood in the glow of the lantern, my hands on my hips and Bis on the crumbling retaining wall behind me. Four feet tall, it almost put him eye to eye with me. Together we looked across the tall grass at the damaged ley line stretching across the lower, long-fallow garden and waited for Jenks and Trent to return.

The ley line looked ugly with my second sight, worse in the lamp’s glow than it had in the sun, with violet-purple streamers coming from the line to soak up the energy leaking through. But for all its nasty appearance, I was sure the line itself was fine apart from the original leak. Ku’Sox had moved all the minuscule imbalances from the other lines, concentrating them in mine to make an event horizon. It was an event, all right. The last one the demons would ever see.

I shivered despite the night’s warmth, and Bis tightened his grip on the retaining wall, making the stones crack. I didn’t want to let the little guy know how nervous I was, but it was hard with him so close. Trent’s rings were in my pocket. I had refused to give them to him when I’d come back through the vault, afraid he’d come out here with Quen and do something stupid. Quen wasn’t up to magic yet, and it had taken both of us to convince the man to stay with Ray tonight lest Ellasbeth take her to the West Coast for her own hostage demands.

Trent was helping Jenks canvass the nearby area for pixy intel, but I still felt naked knowing that Al wouldn’t be able to save my butt if Ku’Sox showed. For the first time, I was really on my own. “Well?” I whispered to Bis, wishing they would hurry up. “What do you think?”

Bis shifted his clawed hind feet and bits of rock pattered down. “It hurts,” he said, simply, ears pinned to his skull. Depressed, I went to sit on the stone wall beside him, scooting myself up until my feet hung above the lower path.

“But do you think we can separate the imbalances?”

He shrugged, looking lost as his ears perked up. I was asking a lot, and I edged closer, rocks pinching me. “Let me hear,” I said, touching his foot so I could feel the lines resonate.

My teeth clenched as suddenly every single ley line within my reach sung inside my head. It was a heady experience—and why I usually had a bubble of protection around my thoughts when I touched Bis. This time, though, the harsh discord of my nearby ley line cut through the beauty, making my teeth ache and my head hurt.

“My God!” I said as I let go of him and stared at the line with my second sight. “How can you stand it?”
And how am I going to separate anything from that noise?

The cat-size gargoyle shrugged, touching his wingtips together over his head. “I don’t have a choice. Everyone is tired of listening to it. I’ve been told to fix it, and fix it now.”

My thoughts zinged back to the three gargoyles I’d seen tonight before we’d left, perched on the roof of the church and spitting at the pixies to keep them out of earshot as they talked in low rumbles. I would’ve gone up into the belfry to eavesdrop, but I was afraid they might take Bis and move to another church. “You!” I said, surprised. “But it’s my line!”

His red eyes glowed eerily in the lantern’s light. “And I’m responsible for you having made it.”

“Bis, this isn’t your fault. Neither is Ku’Sox exploiting the tear to try to break the ever-after. Even if you hadn’t left me, I would have scraped that hole trying to get out.” I clutched my arms around myself, cold as I remembered it. I might have managed to jump the lines, but I’d damaged my aura and scraped a hole in reality in the process.

“But I left you,” he said, unable to look at me.

Smiling, I bubbled my thoughts and touched his shoulder. “It was my fault, not yours, for trying to jump a line before I knew what I was doing.”

He was silent, and I gave his shoulder a squeeze before letting go. I knew he still blamed himself. He’d changed a lot since then, waking up in the day for brief periods, becoming more somber, less prone to playing tricks on the pixies. He was getting older, and I worried that I’d brought an end to his childhood before its time. “Is this why there have been gargoyles on the roof with you?” I asked, not sure how much he’d be willing to tell me.

Immediately Bis brightened. “They’re teaching me the vibrations of their lines,” he said proudly. “Usually a gargoyle is taught by only one other gargoyle, but the lines aren’t acting right, so they’re taking turns by singing me only their line, the one they know by heart.”

“D-demons?” I stammered. “You’ve been talking to demon-bound gargoyles?”

He nodded, almost going invisible as he flushed a deep black to make his red eyes stand out. “They’re trying to teach me all the lines so that I can teach them to you. I only know a few, since most won’t leave the ever-after and their demons. They want me to come to them.”

He dropped his eyes, scared of the idea, and I frowned. “The lines aren’t acting right,” he said, clawed feet shifting as he looked at the line. “Demons aren’t jumping on their own at all. Everyone needs their gargoyle, like they’re brand-new to line jumping.”

Remembering my jump from the mall to Newt’s kitchen, I nodded. “They’re teaching you line jumping,” I said, and he grinned, a glint of light showing on his thick black teeth.

“Yup.”

I looked at the line, then him. “So you know what some of the lines sound like?

He nodded, making a face. “I know what they’re
supposed
to sound like. They’re off.”

“Because their imbalances are here in my line . . .” Fingers tapping the cold stone, I thought that over. “Bis, if you know what they’re supposed to sound like and you can hear what they sound like now, then maybe I can find what’s missing in my line here and shift it back. It’s the misplaced imbalance that’s causing the trouble.”

Bis’s eyes blinked slowly. “Maybe that’s what they were talking about,” he said, his heavy brow furrowing. “Pigeon poop, Rachel. Talking to those old gars is like talking to crazy old men. They never come out and tell you what they mean. Everything is spoons and two-legged chairs. What does a spoon have to do with a ley line? I don’t know! Do you?”

Clearly he was frustrated. I could sympathize, having listened to enough wise-old-man crap to fill a wheelbarrow. “No,” I admitted, “but if we can separate even one imbalance and put it back, it might make a big difference in the leak. Buy us some more time.”

“Or Ku’Sox might show up,” Bis said.

True.
I exhaled heavily and turned in a slow circle, looking into the dark for the silver tracing of pixy dust. Jenks should have been back by now; Trent was slowing him down.

“Sounds kind of hard,” Bis said, the tip of his tail twitching.

I turned to follow his gaze to the ugly, shrill line, slumping as my first excitement died. “I know,” I said dejectedly. “I have no idea how to separate the imbalances.”

Bis moved his wings, the hush of leather against leather making me shiver. “Why does it have to be hard?”

Bis’s head turned. A second later, Jenks’s wings’ clatter became obvious. “It always is,” Jenks said as he hovered before us, dusting heavily and clearly having heard Bis’s last statement. Behind him, a black shadow strode out from the surrounding woods. It had to be Trent, or Jenks would be having issues. Besides, no one else I knew moved with that kind of grace.

“Well?” I asked Jenks, trying not to look at Trent as he rejoined us. Pierce’s warning was still ringing in me. I was not in love with Trent, and never would be—especially with Ellasbeth back in the picture and Trent on a mission to
save the elves.
True, we worked marginally well together. His unexpected surprises were annoying, but they did generally work out. And yes, he looked more than a little attractive in his sturdy black jeans, tucked-in stretchy shirt, and lightweight rain jacket. His fair hair was covered with a black cap to keep off the damp, and the black gloves were probably just for effect because I knew he wasn’t cold. But to entertain anything more than a casual work relationship was laughable.

Seeing Jenks hovering over his shoulder, I was struck by how they managed to look as if they went together though they were nothing alike. “There isn’t much here for pixies unless there’s a tour coming through,” Jenks said, his face glowing from the dust. “They remember you being here yesterday, and a bunch of demons before that, but not one on his own like Ku’Sox. We did a quick survey, and we’re good for at least a quarter mile unless you count the raccoons.”

I squinted at the line. “Okay. I’m going to take a look-see—”

“You’re not getting in that line!” Jenks shouted, and Bis’s red eyes widened in alarm.

“I’m not getting in the line,” I said, glancing at Trent to see him watching me with the same intensity as Jenks. “You think I’m out here sniffing fairy farts? Bis knows what some of the lines are supposed to sound like, and by comparing that to what they sound like now, maybe we can find the imbalance, bubble it, and move it out . . .”

My words trailed off when Trent tilted his head. “That wasn’t our original idea.”

Jenks hovered right before my nose, wings clattering belligerently. “Yeah? Then what?”

I winced. “Maybe if I move it out, it might just get sucked back into place?”

Bis was making this weird noise, and we all turned to him. I think it was his version of clearing his throat, but it sounded like rocks in a garbage disposal. “Ah, bubbled imbalance won’t get sucked anywhere,” he said apologetically. “But if you tune the bubble holding it to the same vibration as its parent line . . .” His words trailed off and his wings shifted.

Trent’s exhale was long and slow. It wasn’t the immediate no I had expected, and seeing him consider it, Jenks seemed to become even more frustrated.

“Tink’s little pink rosebuds,” he grumbled, landing next to Bis and checking the sharpness of his sword. “Now I’ve got two of them to watch. Whose idea was this?” He looked up at Bis. “Yours?”

I waited nervously as Trent thought it over, his boots scuffing the gravel. “Tuning your aura to a line pulls you into it, so tuning a bubble, which is basically an aura-tainted field of force, will pull whatever is in the bubble to the line? It’s worth a look, since we have the rings as a safety net.” He turned to Jenks. “Jenks, what do you think?”

My eyebrows rose.
Asking Jenks for his opinion?
Maybe the time they’d worked together had made an impact after all.

“I think you’re all screwy in the head,” he said when Bis nodded his encouragement. “But go ahead. I’ve got Quen’s number in my phone. I’ll call him if you both explode in a flash of black underwear and money so I won’t have to fly all the way home.”

Bis made a snuffing snort of a laugh, but I was thrilled, and my heart gave a thump and settled. “Let’s do it,” I said as I turned to the line. “Bis? You want to sit on my shoulder?”

He nodded, and as Jenks crossed his arms over his chest and hovered over the wall, Bis made the three-beat wing flap to me, landing with his toes spread wide so he wouldn’t gouge me when he landed. The lines flashed into existence at his touch, but prepared for it, I gritted my teeth at the tinfoil-like sensation. It was awful, seeing as we were so close to a line, and I could understand why the gargoyles on both sides of reality were having issues.

“Rache?” Jenks said suspiciously when my eyes closed in a strength-gathering blink.

“Fine,” I said, then choked when Bis tightened his tail around my neck.

“Sorry,” he said as he loosened his hold. The little guy was the size of a cat but had the weight of a bird, smelling like cold stone, leather, and feathers from the pigeons he ate.

“My God,” I said as I stared at the line, a sharp pain starting just over my right eye. “This is awful. Bis, can you show me what one of the line signatures you’ve learned looks like?”

Trent cleared his throat. “You want to use that safety net, or keep it in your pocket, Ms. Morgan?”

I jerked, sheepish at Jenks’s severe look as I wiggled the rings out and extended them to Trent on my palm. Bis wiggled his toes as they glinted in the lantern’s light. “I think you’d have more control if you took the bigger ring,” I said, and as Trent reached for it, I closed my fist. “No funny stuff,” I warned, opening my fingers again.

Trent put his hand under mine to hold it steady, jerking back in alarm when the full force of the lines hit him through Bis. “Holy . . . ah, wow,” he said, eyes wide in the low light, distress clear on him. “Is that what the line feels like to you?”

Bis’s feet tightened on me. “It kind of hurts. Can we hurry up?”

Immediately Trent took the larger ring. I put the smaller one on my pinkie, but if it was like our practice run earlier, nothing would happen until he put his on. It bothered me that the only way I could take off my ring now was if Trent slipped his over mine, nesting them on my finger to remove them both at once. It had been a scary five minutes figuring that out.

“Here we go,” Trent said as he took his gloves off, and Jenks frowned, still not convinced. The glint of the pinkie ring twin to my own caught my eye, and I wondered at the connections we had. I still wore Al’s demon mark. Was it the same thing, or different?

My shoulders wiggled as the ring fitted about Trent’s finger and a weird sensation of entanglement sprung up around me. Bis actually sighed in relief as the connection to the discordant line dulled. It was still there, but it felt diluted—the best I could put it was that the energy was now going through a maze of passages to find me. It was the chastity ring, and when I nodded, Trent eased the grip of it until the flow was again its normal self, almost as if he had lifted me above the maze and I could connect normally.