Ever After

at me. A panicked expression raced across his face until it was replaced by mistrust. My eyes narrowed when he poked my shoulder as if trying to decide if I was real. “By the two worlds colliding, you really are Rachel. I thought you were Newt. Damn, girl! Wait until I tell my familiar!”

“Touch me again, and you’ll really be in pain,” I said, shoving the cup at him. “Newt’s kitchen? You know it?”

He took the coffee and looked at the ceiling. “Costs more this week.”

I forced my jaw to unclench. “Look, I’m trying to save your asses. You really think it’s a good idea to try to skin me for a sliver of smut?”

The demon’s gaze came back to me. “No. Look up there. The ceiling is down by about a foot from yesterday. Space is shrinking, and unless you want to end up in a wall, I need a gargoyle assist.”

Shit, it is happening already. No wonder it is so warm.

“Well?” he said. “How bad you want in?”

If I didn’t get these rings fixed, nothing was going to happen. I really didn’t give a flying flip about the ever- after, but I wanted Ceri and Lucy back. “I’ll take the smut,” I said, and he grandly took his cap off to dust the nearest circle.

Two demons across the plaza had noticed me. Damn. One of them was Dali. I gave him a bunny-eared kiss- kiss, and he vanished, leaving his friend to eye me in speculation. Great, this was going just great. “Can we make this fast?” I said as I stepped into the circle. It was taking too long.

Grunting, he gestured and the line iced through me, dissolving me to a thought and back to substance again. The line felt sour, but it was still even in flow. The gargoyle assist made the materialization smooth without the barest hint of unequal air pressures or misstep. I misted back into existence . . . in my kitchen.

“Hey!” I shouted, turning to him, but the jump was complete and I was yelling at my old refrigerator. My eyes narrowed. It was my old refrigerator, the one you could put a goat into, not that Ivy and I ever had. I’d blown it up almost two years ago on the solstice.

“I vowed if you ever put her image on your twisted bones again, I would not stay my hand, you foul carrion!”

I spun. “Pierce!” I shrieked as he came at me from across the kitchen, grabbing a knife from the counter as he ran. “Pierce, it’s me!” My breath exploded out of me as I hit the wall, his arm under my chin and a knife at my middle. This wasn’t my kitchen. The fridge was old. The light was wrong. The copper pots were too tarnished. “It’s me,” I choked, blood pounding. “Get off!”

But he only snarled, the scent of coal dust and shoe polish filling my senses.

“Hey!” I yelped when the knife pricked me, and I kneed him, getting my arms up and between his when his grip eased. “Get off!”

Clutching himself, he fell back. Pissed, I tugged my clothes straight and kicked the knife away. A wave of ever-after coated him, and I touched my side, my fingers coming away wet with blood. Damn it, he’d cut right through my shirt.

Pierce knelt on the floor before me in wool trousers and a colorful vest, looking like an actor from an early movie. His expression pained, he leaned back on his heels, his arms spread wide and his neck bared to me. “Go ahead!” he screamed, eyes shut as if daring me to strike him with lightning. “Rip my heart out, you foul beast! I could use the time off to plan your demise!”

I stared. He looked okay, other than the total surrender thing he had going on. His dark curly hair was down to his shoulders again, but his beard was gone, making him look younger. If he was upright, he’d be almost my height exactly, well proportioned and looking like no stranger to hard work. He opened one eye, and when I didn’t say anything, a hint of confusion made him all the more appealing. I thought I might have loved him once, but he was too quick to use the black magic and he kept trying to kill the very people I needed to survive.

“Ah, Pierce?” I said, thinking this might have been a mistake. “You okay?”

His breath came in a heave and he scrambled to his feet. His face became ashen, then red. “Rachel?” he said, echoing my same hesitancy.

I looked over the kitchen, so clearly a mockery of mine now that I had a moment to look at it. My God, it was hot in here. “Newt isn’t here, is she?” If Newt was making duplicates of my kitchen, then she was probably taunting Pierce with images of me as well. Either that or the man was truly off his rocker; by the horrified expression he was now wearing, though, I thought he was stone-cold sane.

“By all creation. It’s really you!” he exclaimed, and I fell back to the wall when he rushed me. My lips curled up in a smile when he gave me a quick hug, my arms going about him to find he felt both familiar and different. Almost immediately he dropped back, pumping my hand up and down. “I am powerfully sorry!” he gushed, eyes bright. “I thought you were her. The hag appears as you to get a rise out of me when she’s bored. Are you hurt? Did I bruise you? I should have known it was you. Gods, I’m a toad!”

“I’m fine,” I said, hoping he didn’t see the tiny cut. “Sorry about, ah, hitting you. Are you okay?”

He went scarlet, glancing at the floor where he’d prostrated himself on my mercy. “I’m of a mind I deserved it and more.” Looking shamed, he fell back a step. “I agree my situation isn’t ideal and a far cry from the pomp and circumstance of a coven member, but I understand the world here, unlike the one you live in, and every time I try to kill her, I get a little closer.”

I came out from against the wall, both curious and afraid to see the rest of Newt’s apartments. “Oh.”

“I almost had the harlot the last time, but she turned into you.” He gestured weakly, his eyes pinching at the corners as he tried to explain the last five minutes. “I couldn’t do it.”

“Pierce . . .” I started, my hand on the table so alike but not the same as the one Ivy had. Perhaps I should have tried harder to get him back on the reality side of the lines.

“It’s who I am,” he said solemnly, taking my hand and making me look at him. “I think she enjoys my trying to kill her.” He winced, looking worried. “You’re on her mind. Be careful. That’s not a healthy place to be.”

“That’s why I’m here,” I said, pulling away. “She’s out, right?”

“Oh, aye, she’s out on the surface. The ever-after is shrinking, and she’s trying to talk to sleeping gargoyles.” He leaned back, arms over his chest. We could almost be in my kitchen, if you didn’t look close. “There’s talk of killing you. Ku’Sox is petitioning for it in soft whispers.” He pushed forward, eyes eager. “We can kill him, you and I. Rachel, is that why you’re here? It is, isn’t it! Why else would you risk it, especially now!”

“No. Pierce, I can’t kill Ku’Sox.”

He turned away, opening cupboards to show tools and instruments my kitchen had never had. “Not alone, certainly,” he said confidently. “With my help, it’s possible. Let me gather my things, and we will be away, that monster dead in five minutes.”

Distressed, I felt the rings in my pocket. “Not even with your help,” I said, and he glanced up from a drawer, frowning. I remembered that frown, and I stifled a surge of tired anger. “Pierce, I’ve fought him before, and he’s too strong. Too fast. I’m not that good.”

“Mmm,” he grumbled, then shocked me when he opened the gas oven and pulled out a heavy lockbox. “I have a curse I was going to inflict on her next time I found her sleeping.”

The box hit the floor with a thud, and I jumped. He wasn’t listening. “Pierce.”

“Here is the wicked thing!” he said, having opened it up. “That’s a demon killer if I ever saw one!”

“Pierce, stop.” He had stood, and I took his hands, folding them about whatever ley line charm he’d made. Eye to eye, he squinted at me in mistrust, and I slowly let go. “I’m not going to confront Ku’Sox in a test of magic. I’m not afraid of him,” I said when Pierce took a breath to protest, “but everyone else is and I know my limits.”

“Rachel . . .”

“I know my limits,” I said again, silent until he brought his sour expression back to me. “I don’t have to kill him, just prove that he’s the one who unbalanced my line.”

Pierce frowned, looking capable and disappointed in the fake sunlight coming in the window. It was foggy past the blue curtains. It would always be foggy. “Then why are you here if you’re not seeking my help to kill him?”

Heart pounding, I brought out the rings. “These,” I said, and he picked up the largest one. “I need to reinvoke them. You said it was possible.”

“They’re deader than a three-day possum,” he said dryly, handing it back. “What do they do?”

“Create a bond between two people. They’re elven chastity rings.”

Pierce started, his blue eyes jerking from me to the rings and back again. Shoving the “demon killer” ley line