Hollows 11 - Ever After (12 page)

It was true, and I winced when Ku’Sox rose up, looking lean and elegant. “Blaming
this
on me? How gauche.” His expression turned mocking. “And typical, I’m afraid.”

“Why not?” I barked out, unable to help myself. “You’re behind
this.
”

The demons around him eased back to give him more room, and an uneasy murmur rose. “Careful, Rachel,” Al said as he leaned forward, blocking my view of them.

Jittery, I pushed his hand off me. “Ku’Sox kidnapped Kalamack’s daughter and his, ah, common-law wife,” I said, exaggerating. “And then the lines go sour? All of them? Doesn’t that seem a little odd to any of you?”

Again, the demons whispered among themselves, very aware of, and not liking, Ku’Sox’s genocidal tendencies. Al was a lot more direct, and I pulled away when he pinched my elbow. “Stop trying to distract them. It’s transparent and obvious.”

“Is it?” I said loudly to Al but talking to all of them. “Distraction seems to be working for him! Have any of you given any thought to
why
he might have kidnapped my former familiar’s child and wife? My
elfin
familiar?”

The mention of their age-old enemies got the expected snarls, but Newt and Dali were listening. Their war had nearly killed all of them.

“I say we kill her and be done with it!” Ku’Sox said loudly.

Taken aback, I spun, the ring of flowers falling from me to land in the dry moat between us. “Kill me?” I said, unheard over the rising complaints. “Are you nuts?”

“I can’t think straight, my head is ringing so badly from the lines!” one demon shouted as he stood, getting a round of agreements before he sat down in vindication.

“I was in the middle of some work, and I lost it all!” a second exclaimed. “You owe me restitution for a week’s work down the crapper!”

Al’s brow was furrowed. “My student is not responsible for your failure to record your curses in the collective,” he said, and Dali nodded his agreement.

“We have a problem,” a third said, a band of blue fabric draped over his shoulders. His voice was firm, and I wondered who he was. “The imbalance is impacting everything. It took two of you to summon her through the lines. Two! That’s not normal. And it’s getting worse!”

I took a step forward. “Well, that was because of Trent,” I said, and Al jabbed me with his elbow to shut up.

Newt and Dali pulled their attention from the rising noise behind me. “Trent tried to block our summons?” Newt asked, her long legs showing from under her toga before she tugged it to cover them.

“It’s never taken a collective to summon anyone!” the demon with the blue sash said loudly, enjoying the attention his claim had brought him. “The ever-after is falling apart!”

The sky is falling, the sky is falling,
I thought derisively, and Newt shifted her feet to the floor, her expression seeming to mirror my thoughts.

“This is pointless,” Newt said as she poised almost coyly. “Stay on track, gentlemen. Rachel, love, can you fix the line?”

I didn’t like being called “love,” especially not by her, but I let it pass. “No,” I said sullenly.

“Of course she can!” Al shouted to drown out the immediate complaints, his hands raised pleadingly as he shot me a glare. “We need more time, is all.”

“We have no time!” Ku’Sox asserted, aggressively riling them up. “She broke the balance. Killing her will fix it.”

“It will not!” I exclaimed, but Al’s wince and Dali’s sudden deflation as he sat down made me wonder. “It won’t, will it?” I asked Al softly, and the demon made a long, drawn-out, regretful noise of possibility.

Dali leaned forward, his elbows on his knees, ignoring the rising noise behind us for a moment. “Unfortunately it might,” he said to me, giving the demons time to argue. “Lines created from a jump between reality and the ever-after are permanent, for the most part, but lines made from a reality-to-reality jump are not, and killing you might erase it.”

“Might?” Panicking, I looked at Ku’Sox, hating his smug smile. “This is a setup,” I said, wanting to retreat but there was nowhere to go. “The line was stable. Well, not stable, but it wasn’t unzipping like this! Someone’s tampered with it!” It was as close as I dared go without actually blaming him, and even so, Al lightly smacked me on the shoulder to shut up.

“We have nowhere to go if the ever-after collapses,” Ku’Sox said, voice loud over the rising noise. “Kill her before it’s too late!”

“Wrong!” I shouted, and Al sighed heavily. “
They
have nowhere to go. You do.”

Ku’Sox beamed at me as if I’d played right into his hands. “Not anymore, but you do, Rachel. Perhaps
you
are trying to kill
us.
”

“Me?” I stammered, mentally backpedaling as I realized why he was so smug. He was going to kill the ever-after and everyone in it—blaming it on me. He had a way around the curse. Had to. Or he knew a way to force me to remove it. Maybe Lucy and Ceri had been kidnapped to force my hand, not Trent’s. Damn it all to the Turn and back.

“I didn’t do this!” I spun to face the crowd behind me, then back to Dali. “I was on a horse in reality when the line started leaking this bad!”

Ku’Sox stood. “Then you admit it was leaking? And you never told anyone?”

Al was holding his head in his hand, and I wished I’d kept my mouth shut. “Just a little,” I said, then had to raise my voice when they all began talking. “I was trying to fix it before anyone noticed!”

Al stood stiffly beside me as he fidgeted in subtle ways that only I could possibly see. “Will you shut up now?” he breathed, roughly turning me to face Newt and Dali.

“But he did it!”

“But you can’t prove it!” Al mocked my whiny tone.

“There are thriving Rosewood babies being stolen, and he kidnapped hostages to force my freed familiar to make the cure permanent!” I shouted. “Doesn’t that sound a bit odd to you?” But no one cared.

“Are you done?” Al muttered, his back stiff as he faced Newt and Dali.

Looking uneasy, Dali rose to his feet, hands raised to quiet them. “Rachel, as it is your line and you’re the only demon who can survive free of the ever-after, we are understandably concerned that your intent is to destroy us
and
the ever-after.”

My hasty breath to protest whooshed out as Al poked me in the ribs to be quiet.

“Much as I regret my decision,” Dali said, moving to the front of the drop-off between us, “it’s my recommendation that if Rachel admits that she can’t balance her line, then perhaps her death is the best way to ensure our continued existence.”

I couldn’t speak. They weren’t serious, were they? Ku’Sox had done something. I knew it by his smug expression as he listened to the demons call for my blood. Standing there, my heart hammered, and I backed up into Al. They couldn’t. I hadn’t done anything!

Dali looked at me, and I quailed. “If it’s a choice between your life and all of ours, then you will die.” He hesitated, then added quietly, “Even if you’re not actually the one who should be blamed for it.”

His eyes slid behind me to Ku’Sox, and my hope leaped. He believed me. I glanced at Al to see he realized it, too. And Newt, now toasting me with her wine. Proof. We needed proof. I could do that. I could get the damned proof. I just needed a few days.

“Gentle associates, gentle associates!” Al said, his voice rumbling through me from where I was pressed against him. “Of course she can balance her line.” His breath was like brimstone against me, sharp and jolting. “Tell them, Rachel,” he prompted, his voice low with threat.

“S-sure,” I stammered, scared to death.

Al’s eyes closed in relief. “We can fix it,” he said as they opened.

“Then why haven’t you?” Ku’Sox said softly, mocking us.

“My rooms are shrinking!” another called.

“We have nowhere to go. Kill her now before it’s too late!” a third shouted, and it all started up again. I began to panic. Only Al’s firm hold on my arms kept me from moving. He was not my jailer, he was my rock. Whatever happened to me would happen to him. I didn’t altogether trust Al, but I trusted that.

“No.” It was a soft utterance, and my eyes went to Newt, still sitting calmly on her bench, legs curled back up under her again. “I said no!” she said louder, and the noise behind Al and me abated. “I told you months ago that Rachel’s line was unbalanced, and you all said I was crazy.”

“You are crazy!” someone shouted from the back, and she smiled as if in benediction.

“Tru-u-u-ue,” she drawled when they quieted again. “But no one listened. You will listen to me now. Call it your collective penance.”

My heart gave a pound, and I tensed against Al. Was it a chance or a sentence?

Knowing all eyes were on her, Newt stood gracefully. “I will give you space from my own rooms to compensate your loss, Cyclarenadamackitn. I will compensate all your one-inch, two-inch losses because I know how
important every inch
is to you aged, decrepit men. But in return, I want to see if she can do it. It would be a skill worth having—don’t you think? Being able to balance lines scraped from a reality-to-reality jump? In case we someday can return to reality and abandon the ever-after completely?” I swallowed hard as Newt turned her black, featureless eyes on me. “If she can’t, then you may kill her.”

There was a breath of silence, in which I could almost hear the demons thinking that over. Behind me, Al sighed, his hands gripping my upper arms easing. It was a chance.

I looked at Ku’Sox and his evident anger, but he stayed silent as the demons came to a consensus. I couldn’t tell if Dali was pleased or irritated as he stood, frowning once at Newt’s pleased smile as she beamed over all of them.

“So!” Dali said, bringing everyone’s attention back to the stage. “Are we agreed? Rachel and Al have time to balance the line if Newt compensates everyone?”

Al held his breath as no one spoke, each waiting for the other to say something first.

“Ku’Sox?” Dali prompted. It was clear that the bastard child wasn’t pleased, but if he continued to push for my death, it would be obvious that he wanted it.

His face empty of emotion, Ku’Sox turned on a heel. Pushing past the surrounding demons, he distanced himself, and then, with a soft breath of air replacing his mass, he vanished.

“I’ll take that as a yes,” Dali said as the rest of the demons began popping out in turn, a soft muttering of conversations rising and falling like surf.

I finally began to relax, turning to look up at Al as he let go of my shoulders. “Now what?” There was no way in hell I could balance that line.

Al wouldn’t look at me, and I again wondered how I could have gone from fear to mistrust to understanding to reliance in so short of time. “We find a way to fix this,” he said. “Or a way to blame it on someone else,” he added, stiffening as Newt rose and made her way to us. Dali was busy with a few lingering demons, and I watched as Al seemed to shift and change, the mask he always wore sliding over him again as she came forward.

“That’s it then!” he said cheerfully as he clapped his thick hands again. “I guess we’ll be off to look at the line. See what we can do.”

“Yes,” Newt said, her smile chilling me as she took my hand and looked at it, noticing perhaps that I now had a metal pinkie ring instead of a wooden one. “You go balance that line. And in the meantime, Rachel’s debt to me grows with each passing second.”

I winced as I pulled my hand from hers, but what could I say? I did have some income here from the use of the tulpa I’d made for Dalliance.

Al was huffing and puffing, but I knew there was no deal we could get that was better than our continued survival.

“Al,” Newt said sharply before he could protest. “If your student dies, that debt reverts to you.”

Al glanced at Dali, and then back to her. “Looking forward to it,” he grumbled, his hand on my shoulder tightening.

Newt’s black gaze was on the wisp of my tattoo that showed, and I managed a nervous smile. “Thank you,” I said as she turned to leave, and she spun slowly back to us.

“Don’t thank me now, love. Save it till the morning after.”

In a hush of inrushing air, Newt vanished like a Cheshire cat. Feeling ill and scared, I turned to Al. “Can we go home?”

“No,” he said, simultaneously leading me down off the dais and waving to Dali as if everything was A-Okay, not Oh Shit. “But I agree we need to leave.”

I hopped from the raised stage, and Al’s hands left my wrist. I felt small as I looked at the stone bench Ku’Sox had been sitting on. “It’s him,” I said, and Al growled. “Ku’Sox has done something to the line. You know it, too. He’s got those kids, and this is all an elaborate con to destroy the ever-after and blame me for it.”

“If you can’t prove it, it doesn’t mean shit,” Al said, but as I balked, he sighed and rubbed his head. “Fine,” he grumbled as he took my arm as if to escort me. “The sun is still up, but let’s go look at your line.”

“How?” I said, knowing he couldn’t be in reality when the sun was above the horizon, but it was too late and the soft ache of the ley line had taken me.

Chapter Eight

T
he red sun of the ever-after hurt my eyes, and I squinted, holding up a hand as I stood on dusty red soil made of pulverized rock and felt the gritty wind push at me. Al and I had come in on a slightly raised plateau. Before us snaked a dry riverbed. To our left was a slump of broken rock where Loveland Castle was in reality. Sprigs of waist-high yellow grass were scattered about, and a few stunted trees were all that was left of the woods that surrounded the castle in reality. Here in the ever-after, it was desolate.

Between us and the pile of rock, a ley line shimmered, more of a heat image than anything else in the sunbaked wind. The line was making me feel slightly nauseated, almost seasick.
The leak?
I wondered. As a gargoyle, Bis would know, but he’d be hard to wake until the sun went down.

Beside me, Al was again dressed in his familiar crushed green velvet coat, lace and all. Black boots with buckles scuffed the dirt, and he jauntily sported an obsidian walking cane and a matching tall hat. Dark round glasses protected his eyes, but I could tell it wasn’t enough, as his expression was pained and the sun seemed to be picking away at our auras as we stood. The sun was one of the reasons the demons hid underground in vast caverns overlain with the illusion of the outside. The fact that structures tended to fall apart on the surface was another.

It was odd seeing Al, with his top hat and elegant grace, poking about with the tip of his cane as he found evidence of other demons. “No surface demons,” I said. The hot air hurt my chest.

“The sun feels worse today.” Al crouched to turn over a rock that someone had shifted.

I winced as the wind whipped my toga and tiny pinpricks of rock hit my bare legs. All around me were the telltale signs of other demons: a footprint here, a scuff there—an oval impression in the dust that looked like the bottom of Newt’s staff. They’d been here, seen the damage, incidentally obliterating the evidence that Ku’Sox might have been here earlier to make the leak in my line worse. I sort of knew how the I.S. felt.

Al slowly exhaled as he stood, his expression blank as he looked out over the dry riverbed to the scrub and trees. His fingers fumbled in a tiny pocket, and he sniffed a pinch of brimstone. “It’s a damn ugly place for a ley line.”

“I wasn’t planning on making one to begin with,” I said, then shivered when a wave of ever-after coated me, falling away to show he’d changed me out my toga for head-to-toe black leather. No bra or panties, but at least the gritty wind wasn’t scouring me like the sun was stripping my aura, and this outfit, unlike most, fitted me, not Ceri.

Oh God,
Ceri.
I was no closer to getting them back than when I’d got here.

Unaware of my thoughts, Al shoved a prissy pink-and-white lace parasol at me. “Here.”

The frail thing clashed with the leather, but immediately I felt a sense of relief in its shadow. I’d seen Ku’Sox. He knew I was aware of what he’d done. He’d make his demands soon enough, and until then, I had to believe that Ceri and Lucy were okay. “Thanks,” I said as I looked at the stack of rubble. “Shouldn’t the line be over the rocks? That’s where I came in.”

Al began picking his way to my ley line, his cane knocking jagged chunks of rock from his path. “Lines drift,” he said, his head down. “Move. They’re like magnets repelling each other. They will shift across continents given enough time and impetus. They only appear to be stationary because they’ve balanced with each other ages ago. Yours here . . .” Al sniffed in consideration. “It likely won’t move much anymore. Has it always been this size?”

I nodded as I came even with him and faced the barely visible shimmer in the air. The ley line the university was built on was wide enough that you could drive a team of horses down it for a quarter mile. The one in my graveyard was about four feet wide and twenty feet long, an admittedly small line. Mine here was about the same, maybe a little longer.

Al pressed his lips together, puffing his air out as he gazed at seemingly nothing, but he was probably looking at my line with his second sight. “You got out fast. The longer it takes, the wider the wound.”

“Really?” So a small line was a good thing, which made me wonder who made the line in my graveyard. Then I wondered who had taken forever to get out of the one at the university. Al maybe?

Walking the length of the shimmer in the air, Al turned and strolled back, the line a haze between us. “A line this size can’t be leaking this much on its own.”

“It wasn’t when I left it.” I cocked my hip, feeling naked without my usual shoulder bag.

Al’s focus landed on me. “Can you hear it?” he asked, and my lips puckered in distaste. “You’re not using your second sight,” he added, and I shook my head, tucking a gritty strand of hair behind an ear. But at his dramatic prompting, I exhaled and opened my second sight.

The ringing worsened, scraping across my awareness in a discordant jangle the way the red sun seemed to rub my skin raw. But as bad as it sounded, it looked even uglier. The line was the usual red shimmer at chest height, but there was a sharply defined line of purple at its center running the entire length, thickest at the center and thinning to nothing at the ends. It was almost black at its core, and streamers of fading red were funneling into it like bands of energy slipping into a black hole. I could actually see the leak as it sucked in everything around it, and it made my stomach twist.

“Is it safe to use like that?” I said to Al, looking distorted and red through the line’s energy. Behind him, the rubble loomed ominously.

He shrugged. “We used it to get here.”

Distressed, I put a hand to my middle and dropped my second sight. “Al,” I said. “That purple core wasn’t there the last time we were here.”

“I know.”

“What did Ku’Sox do to it?” I said, frustrated.

Hands on his hips, Al searched the line with his eyes. He reminded me of Jenks, somehow, even though he didn’t look anything like him. “I don’t know.”

He believed me. Relieved, I eased my shoulders down. I debated walking through the line to stand beside him, then edged around it as he had done, my boots kicking rocks and pebbles out of my way. “So-o-o,” I drawled, feeling small beside him. “How
do
you unbalance a ley line?”

Shifting his arms at his side, he glanced at me and then away. “No idea,” he said, looking as if it had physically hurt him to admit it. “Tell you what. Toddle through it to the other side to reality and see what it looks like from there.”

I backed up a step. “Seriously?”

Frowning, he gave me a once-over, the wind blowing his hair about his glasses. “Get in the line, will yourself through, and see what the line looks like from reality. If we’re lucky, it won’t be like this. Maybe it’s merely a curse we can break.”

I hesitated, then jumped when he swooped forward and took my arm, stepping us into the line together. “Hey!” I yelped as my stomach dropped and the sensation of an unending chalkboard scrape serrated over my nerves. Stiffening, I yanked out of his grip, but I didn’t leave the line since he was still standing in it. If he could take it, I could, too.

Nauseated, I brought up my second sight. The purple line was so close I could touch it. My heart pounded, and little pinpricks of energy seemed to hit me. By all appearances, the line was sucking in energy, but the discordant jangle clearly showed it was giving something off as well.

“I’ll stay here in the line,” Al said, and I swallowed hard. “That way you can tell me what you can see. Do you think you are capable of that?”

“Sure.” I licked my lips, then wished I hadn’t as my tongue came away gritty.

“Now, maybe?” Al prompted as he tugged his sleeves down. “It’s going to take me hours to get the sand out of my hair. And stay out of that purple shit.”

I looked at the evil purple line, swirls of red vanishing at its black core. “Not a problem.” Taking a slow breath, I closed my eyes and willed myself across the realities. It was different from using a line to jump, and demons seldom did it unless they were dragging an unwilling slave across realities—it was akin to taking a horse downtown when everyone else had a hovercar.

The whine from the line shifted, and I opened my eyes, seeing a ghostlike Al still standing beside me with a shimmer of red between us. The air lacked the bite of burnt amber, and the damned wind that always seemed to be blowing in the ever-after was gone. I could hear birds, and under my feet were weeds and grass. The sound of running water was faint, and tall trees leafed out for spring stood around me. Exhaling, I turned. Behind me Loveland Castle was whole again, albeit a dumpy little building falling apart—one man’s dream of nobility crumbling from neglect. Noble ideas tended to do that when left alone.

“Well?” Al prompted, and I turned to him, catching my balance in surprise. The weirdness of the line was impacting everything. The vision of the dusty, sunbaked surface of the ever-after was superimposed over the lush greenery of the raised garden area of the castle, but the purple-and-black line looked about the same from this side as the other.
Ugly.

I lowered the parasol and squinted up at the yellow sun. “It’s hard to tell. Mind if I step away and see what it looks like from outside the line?”

“Hurry up about it,” he grumped, and I took several hasty steps backward until the unsettling scrape across my nerves vanished. My soft headache went with it, and I took a breath of clean air. I was completely in reality, and I brought out the phone from my back pocket, checking the time. I had about fifteen minutes until Jenks summoned me, and knowing Al was becoming impatient, I texted Trent I was okay and to have Jenks give me another hour.

Unfortunately, the line looked about the same from this reality, though the grating whine that remained was a slightly higher pitch. Snapping my phone closed, I looked over the area to try to determine if anyone had been here. The weeds right under the line were all ramrod straight, as if they were being tugged upward. It was weird, and crouching just outside the line, I ran a hand under it, watching the grass spring back. The ground between the clumps of weeds looked as if it had been vacuumed.

I stifled a shiver and rose. Thinking my parasol must look silly, I closed it. They did have tours at the castle, occasionally. I could see no evidence that anyone had been here in weeks, and I stepped back into the line. Al seemed to relax as I became slightly more real to him, slightly closer to his reality. “Well?” he prompted.

I shrugged, scuffing my boots in the grass. “It looks the same, but the pitch of the whine is higher. The grass, though . . .” I kicked at a tuft. “It’s growing funny. Straight up, like it’s being pulled. Even the ground looks like anything not nailed down got sucked up into it.”

“Maybe it did.” Al ducked under the purple line, shuddering as he came up on the other side, closer to me. “The purple seems to be a physical manifestation of a heavy leak of energy.”

“Where’s it going?” I asked. “The energy, I mean?”

Al held his arms behind his back, adopting a posture of lecture that I recognized from our days and nights in his kitchen/lab. “When the sun is up, energy flows from reality into the ever-after; when the sun goes down, the flow reverses.” His voice echoed, ghostlike. “The problem is that less is flowing into the ever-after than is going out. That purple line? I don’t know what in the two worlds that is. It appears to disrupt the natural ebb and flow, sucking in energy like an event horizon. Making it worse than it should be.”

Event horizon?
I wish I’d paid more attention in advanced ley line physics.

Al sighed, and I willed myself back to the ever-after. The wind hit me like a slap, and I popped my parasol back open. “I’m sorry,” I said as I walked around the line to join him.

“For what?” he said sarcastically. “You’ve done so much.”

I fidgeted. “For making the line to begin with, I suppose. How did you balance yours?”

Al gave me an askance look before rocking into motion, distancing himself. “I tweaked it until it was within proper parameters, but we can’t do that with yours because it is a reality-to-reality-based line. Besides, you need to know how to jump a line first.”

My jaw clenched, then relaxed. Bis had to teach me, and he was too young.

“Even so,” Al said as he waved a dry stalk of ever-after grass through the purple line, then inspected it for damage, grunting as if something pleased him. “I don’t think knowing how to jump a line will help. No, this purple shit is different.” He straightened and dropped the stalk. “We should be able to do something about it. Buy us some time. Put us back where we were yesterday.”

The first faint stirrings of hope began in me. “What do you have in mind?”

He flashed me a quick grin, and I felt as if I’d done something right. “Stay here,” he said, waving his white-gloved hands dramatically. “I’ll be right back.”

“Al?” I called out, but he’d vanished. Nervous, I gazed across the bleak, sunbaked earth and the dry riverbed, feeling the bits of windblown earth hit me. I didn’t like being alone on the surface, and I twirled my parasol. My hair was going to be impossible to get through tonight.

Almost immediately he stumbled back in, his head down and back hunched. “Ah, here,” he said, his goat-slitted eyes meeting mine from over his dark-tinted glasses. “Put this on.”

It was a small black ring, and I looked at it in my palm, seeing there was a new lump of a circlet under his glove. Uneasy, I eyed him.

“I’m not giving it to you,” he huffed. “It’s a loan. For a few minutes. I want it back.”

“It’s a ring,” I said flatly, not able to tell if it was black gold or simply tarnished.

“Sharp as a tack, that one,” Al grumped. “You want to put it on, now? Pick a finger.”

I spread the fingers of my left hand, and I swear, he made a small noise of dismay. I looked up to see his jaw clenched. “What does it do?”

Al grimaced, shifting from foot to foot. “I, ah, it’s a life rope of sorts. That is, me in the ever-after to pull your ass out of the fire if I’m wrong, and you in reality, fixing it.”