Hollows 11 - Ever After (19 page)

“On the outside,” he said, and the little girl felt his tension and squirmed to turn around. “His speech patterns were Ku’Sox’s.” Quen shifted his shoulders painfully as he took a set of keys from his pocket. “His combat patterns were Ku’Sox’s as well. I’m surprised the human survived channeling that much power. But then he didn’t have to do much once he got Lucy.”

It must have been horrifying, and my eyes roved over the beauty here as he sifted through the keys: the well-thought-out toys, the books and figures waiting for pretend—the twin cribs, one messy, the other tidy, clearly not slept in, with a lonely giraffe waiting for Lucy’s return. It about broke my heart, and feeling ill, I whispered, “I’m so sorry.”

Silent, Quen held the keys up to Ray, and the little girl took an interest. Quen looked distressed. He knew Ceri would be okay, right? “I’ve been in contact with Dali,” I said as Ray patted the keys. “We have some time before things shift. I’m sure they’re both okay.”

Quen’s entire body relaxed. “It’s what I pray to the Goddess for.”

On the door frame, Jenks shrugged, but I didn’t know what else to say.

Quen still hadn’t unlocked the door, waiting for Ray to lose interest in the keys. I was all for letting children learn when the opportunity presented itself, but I did have a timetable. I took a breath to say something, then hesitated as I realized Ray wasn’t playing with the keys; she was sorting them, her little fingers pushing them around until she found the one she liked with a pat.

“Abba,” she said in her high, little-child voice as she touched the keys, and my eyes widened. I had no idea what Abba was, but it was very clear what she was trying to convey.

“Very good, Ray,” Quen said, his voice soft and holding pride. “That’s the one to get into the big toy box. Now will you go to sleep? Abba has to help Aunt Rachel pick out the toy that’s going to get your mother and Lucy back.”

The elf name for father?
I wondered, vowing to ask Jenks about it later.
Guardian? Protector? Mom’s Mr. Significant?
I didn’t know, but it sounded like a term of affection.

Ray’s face puckered. I thought she was going to cry, but when Quen raised his eyebrows, she thought better of it, turning away from me to cling to him.

“Oh my God,” I said as Quen held her to him with one arm and fitted the key in the lock with the other. “You’re teaching her to be a little you,” I accused, and Quen flashed a smile, not looking at all guilty.

“Someone has to keep Lucy alive when I’m not around,” he said as the door creaked open and he reached in to flick on the light. “Trent’s daughter is entirely too trusting, and I doubt her days with a demon are going to change that. Go on in. I’m going to put Ray down. Ellasbeth already has the book in the cabinet, but this will just take a moment.”

He turned back to the dim nursery, and I waved bye to Ray, the girl watching me over Quen’s shoulder. “Abba,” Ray warbled as Quen put her in the crib, and two little hands reached for him. Quen stooped down to reassure her, and I saw the love before the closet door arced shut. I couldn’t help but feel good. Jenks sighed, and I jumped, having forgotten he was there. Obviously he’d seen the love between them, too. I knew he missed having newlings.

“Wow,” I said as I turned away and took in the “closet.” It was impressive, smaller than the vault Trent had been keeping his most precious secrets in, but more organized. Racks of paintings, shelves of knickknacks of various styles and eras, and one big glass-fronted cabinet with leather-bound books took up most of the room. Cabinetry and a small sink ran along one wall, and a library table with two wingback chairs filled the middle space. Underfoot was a rug that looked old enough to fly, and given the location, it just might if you knew the right word.

“Don’t touch anything, Jenks,” I said, and he scowled at me as he hovered before a rack of shiny ley line baubles.

“I won’t break anything,” he said, then spilled a flash of silver dust as something caught his attention and he darted to it. “Hey! Trent still has that elf porn statue you stole.”

Eyes rolling, I came to see if it was as graphic as I remembered, but I lingered over the pair of rings below Jenks’s feet. One was a simple gold band, the other heavy and ornate. They looked like mismatched wedding bands, reminding me of the rings that Al and I had used when we had shared each other’s strengths. “Ah, Quen?”

Jenks had his hands on his hips as he looked over that nasty statue of three elves in the middle of a threesome. “Tink’s titties,” he said. “I suppose that’s possible.” His head tilted. “You’d need a lot of grease and two straps, though.”

“Quen!” I hissed, and Quen pushed open the safe room’s door, almost shutting it completely behind him. Ray was babbling to herself in the other room, but she’d probably drop off if we didn’t talk too loudly.

“Let me get you the book,” he said, limping past the library table to the tall cabinet.

I pushed close to ask him about the rings, and he handed me a pair of soft gloves lying out on the table. They looked too small, but I tugged them on, thinking they were likely Ceri’s. Quen was putting on a second pair. “Thanks,” I said, feeling the soft knit mold itself to my fingers. “Those rings by Jenks. How old are they?”

The hiss of escaping air from the temperature-controlled cabinet was soft, and Quen glanced at Jenks as he swung the doors wide. “Not sure,” he said shortly. “Old. I can find out.”

“Hey, Quen.” Jenks circled the statue, avarice in his gaze. “Let me know if Trent ever wants to get rid of this. I have a spot in my front room it would look ace in.”

I held my breath as I leaned toward the open cabinet, avoiding any possible demon stink. “Are they demon made?” I asked as I looked over the books, some so old they were falling apart.

Quen looked at me, suspicion in his eyes. “The rings? No. Elven. Why?”

“Al has something similar.” I took a hesitant breath, pleased when I found only the honest scent of leather and decaying ink.

Quen snorted, the rude sound seeming odd coming from him. “I doubt that,” he said as he scanned the spines. “They’re chastity rings.”

Jenks sniggered, coming to make annoying circles around me. “Too late for you, Rache.”

Irked, I waved him off. I thought it odd that Trent would keep chastity rings next to his elf porn, but it wasn’t like he used any of these things. I think. This was his father’s collection, like some dads have stamps. Or guns.

Quen reached for a book set aside by itself. “More accurately, they’re binding rings,” he said, his face showing the strain as he stretched for it. “It creates a continuous bond between two chis so the wearer of the alpha ring can snuff the magical ability of the other if needed. They were used to keep younger, inexperienced elves from exposing themselves as magic users. They don’t work, though. The charm in them is long spent.”

“The books don’t smell,” I said as he set the book on the library table. “Bad, I mean,” when he looked at me. No, they didn’t smell, but there was a faint whine at the back of my ear, like a high-pitched echo of leashed magic that made me uncomfortable.

“None of them have been in the ever-after for at least five hundred years.” His voice was distant as he stood over the book and carefully turned the yellowed pages until he got to a section marked with a black ribbon. The binding made a cracking sound as he shifted the last page, and I swear he winced.

Standing over the tattered book, I looked down to read “Ley Line Corruption and Manipulation” in big, squished loops that I sort of recognized. My eyes went up, and I squinted at Quen suspiciously. “That’s Ceri’s handwriting.”

“No shit!” Jenks said, finally abandoning the statue to come hover over the text.

“I know.” Quen’s eyes shifted as he read the text. “We have six books here that Ceri has copied. A handful of other scripts. She doesn’t remember doing them. Ellasbeth insists that the book stays here. You’re welcome to spend the night if you want to read it cover to cover, but I believe this is what you want. I read it before it was returned to Mrs. Withon.”

Sitting, I looked at Ceri’s extravagant loops and swirls. I sucked at research. If he’d done it already, I was good with that, though I might come back and read it all later. “Thanks,” I said as I tugged the book closer. Quen cringed, and I curled my tingling fingertips under.

“So how come it was at the Withons’?” Jenks said, his feet lightly touching the pages.

Quen sat in the chair across from me, motions slow as if he wasn’t sure he was going to hold together. “Trent’s mother and Ellie were good friends.”

There was more to the story than that, but it didn’t really matter. Jenks flew up when I shifted to a new page, and his dust spilled over everything to make the letters glow. Seeing it, Quen leaned forward. “Interesting . . .”

I met his eyes. “You didn’t know pixy dust makes demon texts glow?”

“No,” he admitted, leaning back and steepling his fingers.

Wondering if this was where Trent got his little nervous tell from, I went back to the text. “You’re shooting yourself in the foot, Quen. Jenks has six bucks looking for property this spring. They can all read and they don’t mind fairies.”

“Hey!” Jenks said. “Quit trying to farm out my kids!”

“Just pointing things out,” I said as I turned the page to a map of the dead lines in Arizona. A second map showed where the author thought they’d been before they’d been shoved together. Quen was right. There might be something here. It was all theory, but theory based on fact and observation.

Seeing me intently quiet, Quen asked, “Do you want something to drink? Eat?”

“No-o-o,” I drawled, feeling like I was close to something.

Hesitating, Quen shifted his chair forward. “I’d like to go out with you the next time you look at the Loveland ley line.”

I thought of his sluggish left leg. He probably couldn’t tap a line yet either. I said nothing, embarrassed. He wasn’t ready to battle demons again. Maybe next week. But next week would be too late.

Quen frowned at my silence, knowing what it meant. Clearly frustrated, he leaned closer until I could smell his aftershave over the characteristic woodsy wine-and-cinnamon scent. “I think I know how Ku’Sox made that event horizon.”

I paused in my reading and looked up. “Event horizon?” Jenks asked, but that was what Al had called it, too.

“The purple line within a line sucking everything in,” he stated, and I shuddered. No wonder I’d felt squished, even if it had only been my mind. Al was lucky to be alive. That the collective had something for him to pattern himself on was probably how he had survived.

Quen carefully lifted the book toward him, his eyes on the yellowed pages. “I think Ku’Sox made it by gathering up the small imbalances that already existed in the other lines, concentrating them in the leaking line you made,” he said, carefully flipping back to the paragraph where the author mentioned the possibility of small line imbalances having no effect if the individual lines were spaced out enough and aligned to the polar forces of nearby lines.

I scooted my chair closer to Quen’s and read the first passage again. “Al did say that the lines were balanced to within safe parameters, implying they all leaked to some degree.”

“Must have been small leaks,” Jenks said, hands on his hips as he hovered over it all, his dust bringing the print back to a new-edged brightness.

“That’s just it,” Quen said, his thick fingers tapping the table. “They don’t add up to what’s in the Loveland ley line.”

“They would if they acted on each other exponentially,” I said.

Quen’s expression twisted in doubt. “Why would they do that?”

“How should I know? I’m shooting at fairies here.” My fingers were starting to cramp from holding the book, and I took my gloves off to rub them. I had enough information to go on a fact-finding mission out at the line. I figured things out by doing, not reading about them. “Al told me that the lines push each other apart, like giant magnets,” I said, unclenching my teeth.
God! Am I the only one hearing this whine?
“If the lines are positive, pushing away from each other, then maybe the imbalance is negative. Maybe you can’t have a line without a little imbalance.”

“Like those little black and white magnet dogs that don’t like each other unless they go face-to-face?” Jenks laughed, but I thought he had it almost exactly right.

Quen adjusted his position, inadvertently telling me his hip was sore. “Lines don’t move.”

“Mine did,” I said. “A good hundred feet from the second floor of the castle to the garden outside. Al said lines moved a lot when they were new, but they stabilized.” Reaching over, I tapped the page with my naked finger, which made Quen wince. My head gave a throb, and I curved my fingers under, wondering if this might be why Al wore gloves.

“Maybe all the lines leaked at first like mine,” I said, wishing I could ask Al about it. “But the farther apart they got, the smaller the leak became. And when Ku’Sox put the imbalances together again, bang! Big leak.”

Quen’s lips twisted in doubt, which made his hospital stubble more obvious. Jenks, though, was bobbing up and down. “Like one sticktight stuck to your tights compared to a ball of them.”

“Or a bunch of dust scattered in a huge vacuum having no effect compared to the same amount balled up into a planet,” I added, and Quen’s expression smoothed as he considered it. “If that’s how Ku’Sox got that purple sludge in my ley line, then all I have to do is divvy the imbalance back up again, and the leak will go back to its original pace. Clear the crud out, and anyone can see the curse that Ku’Sox used to break my line. They’d have to side against him!”

Jenks dusted an excited gold, but Quen still had doubts if his sour expression was any indication. “He’ll simply break it again,” he said as he closed the book and stood.

“Maybe,” I admitted, feeling a stab of worry. “But I’ll be waiting for him this time. If I catch him at it, then he’s in trouble, not me. If I can prove Ku’Sox broke my line, they won’t kill me but band together and make him behave.” I frowned—they should just band together and be done with him regardless.
Cowards.