it better. “What do you know?” he snarled, his wings humming to a transparent brightness, but his feet were nailed to the sill.
Ivy didn’t look up, staring at the light glinting on the cool length of steel as she held it up. “I scared someone I loved like that,” she said softly. “I was young and stupid. The sex play got out of hand. I cut him deeply and wouldn’t stop. I ignored him when he told me no. I carved deeper when he begged me to stop.”
The sword dropped, and her head drooped to follow the steel in her hand. “I knew he could take more and that his pain was fleeting. I thought I had a right to correct his assessment of his abilities, but what I was doing was confusing his mental limits with his emotional ones. I was riding high on his fear, and I bled him within an inch of his life.”
Only now did she look at Jenks. “He forgave me. Eventually. Jax will, too.”
I shifted uneasily, guessing she was talking about Kisten. It sounded about right. Kisten could forgive anything, since he’d done terrible things himself. I thought about that, wondering if only those who did horrible things would ever be able to forgive me.
“Your son made a serious mistake,” Ivy said, and Jenks shuddered. “You beat him, told him he was making an error that was going to end his life, and you told him to walk away before you came back and finished the job. You saved his life. He will forgive you.”
Jenks blinked fast, looking like the nineteen-year-old that he was, with all the insecurities and inexperience that that came with. He wanted to believe. I could see it in his brilliantly green eyes. He took a breath to say something, then changed his mind.
I suddenly realized I had to leave. “Ah, I need to make a call,” I said, leaning down to slide my scrying mirror out from my cookbooks. “I’ll be in the garden,” I added, thinking Jenks might open up if I wasn’t around. God! We were a messed-up bunch.
“I’ll come with you,” Belle said, snaking down her rope. “Make s-s-sure the gargoyles-s-s leave you alone.”
I looked back as I left, seeing that Jenks had flown to Ivy’s monitor. His wings were drooping, and the dust spilling from him was making an oily pattern on the dark screen.
“I left him there, bleeding out. Ivy, he can’t fly.”
“Neither can Belle, and you can’t call her any less a warrior. You saved his life. And perhaps ours. I’m sorry that it was so costly.”
I thanked my lucky stars that neither of them said anything else until I grabbed my spring jacket and fled to the back porch. Standing in the cool breath of the coming sunset, I shoved my arms into the thin leather and glumly sat, Belle taking up a position two feet to my right where I probably wouldn’t squish her. I set my scrying mirror on my left. The squeak of the cat door was loud, and glowing eyes turned to us from the graveyard when the more mundane sound of the screen door hadn’t moved them.
Huddling into my coat, I waved at the gargoyles. I wasn’t altogether comfortable out here with them looking at me, but I wanted to interfere with Jenks and Ivy even less. Besides, I really did want to talk to Al. The rings weren’t invoking. I knew I could do this since I’d done it before. I just needed the confidence of someone who could see what the hell I was doing with my aura. Jenks was good, but he couldn’t hear the lines like a demon.
Rex jumped into my lap, a spot of warmth that I buried my fingers in. The cold damp of the early evening soaked into me as I breathed in the coming night. Low clouds threatened more rain, and last year’s leaves rustled in the cold flower beds, mirroring my mood perfectly. Spring cleanup was slower this year now that Jenks was losing kids, going off in pairs and alone to find their way. How did my life get this complex so fast?
“Rachel,” Belle lisped as she stood beside me, bow unslung as she watched the gargoyles suspiciously, “do you think Jenks-s-s will find his strength of will again?”
“Yes, of course. He’s just having a bad day. He is the strongest person I know. Except for Ivy.” My fingers lightly touched Rex as the cat purred, and I wondered if I could beat someone I loved that badly, even if it was for the greater good.
“I often punished fledglings-s-s for risking the nest.”
“My mother grounded me a lot,” I said, thinking it hadn’t done me any harm. It hadn’t made me any smarter, either.
“Jenks-s-s shouldn’t be hard on himself,” Belle said firmly. “He’s a warrior.”
“Jenks is a gardener in a savage Eden,” I said, believing it. He was a savage gardener with a protective streak. Ivy was just as savage, just as protective, when push came to shove. And me? What was I? What choices would I make when the world hung poised on the arc of the pendulum and I was ready to send it in a new direction?
“You will call your demon now for advice?” Belle asked, and I followed her gaze to my scrying mirror.
“I don’t know,” I said, shifting my feet down a step. “He might not be healed enough.”
Again, the silence stretched. “I’m sorry about Ceri,” Belle said stiffly. “And Pierce.”
I almost smiled. The three of us had killed most of her clan and left her wingless, but perhaps it made more sense to her with her warrior mind-set. “Thank you, Belle.”
“They were great warriors. Pierce . . . Jenks tells me you were nearly joined with him.”
I nodded, bringing up my second sight. Newt’s ley line hung at chest height, a hundred shades of red glowing, mixing, swirling. I desperately wanted to see Pierce there, or even Al. But there was nothing.
“It would have been a good match. You’re both strong.”
“Perhaps,” I said softly. I’d thought I had loved him once, but after the shine of his uniqueness had dulled, I’d come to dislike his loose morals more than I had been attracted to his power and dark strength.
Steadying myself, I reached for my mirror. Reluctantly, slowly, I lifted Rex down and set the heavy glass on my lap instead. I stared into the wine-colored depths in the sunset shadow-light, seeing the roof of the church rising overhead, the steeple distressingly free of Bis. It had been three days. Al should be healed by now.
“Have Jenks and Ivy summon me if I’m not back in two hours,” I said, and Belle nodded, swinging up onto Rex for her warmth. I shivered in my jacket, feeling as if I was being watched as I took a last look over the sunset- gloomed garden.
My way home settled, I closed my eyes and put my hand on the mirror, hoping he was healed.
There was only the uncomfortable screeching that the collective had absorbed from the unbalanced line.
My eyes closed as the unholy chaos of the collective dissolved into the rushing sound of water or wind, and I felt the lofty sensation of having doubled my mind. Relief coursed through me, and I took a slow breath, sensing green trees, old and damp. I’d found him. I think.
In my thoughts, there was a pool of water among the tree roots, only a few inches deep and looking like glass. The air was moist and warm. I could hear water dripping and smell both moss and fog. There was no wind. No grit, no stink of burnt amber. Dancing over the still water were tiny blue butterflies the size of my thumb. It was a forest pool primeval, the light barely making it through the leaves. On the far side of the stone-and-moss- wreathed pool was a black figure hunched and sitting on the largest smooth boulder, his back to me. Al.
At least . . . I thought it was Al. He didn’t look right.
“Al?” I said in our shared dream, remembering having done this once before. I wasn’t sure it was him. He was thin—almost malnourished, like a fairy—his skin very dark and his hair a tight curl. He stood, and I realized he had leathery wings draped down over his back like a cloak. His eyes were red-slitted goat eyes, but so wide they looked black. I’d never seen him this thin and spindly, the angular sharpness even in his face, narrowing down to a very small pointy chin. He looked like a creature of the air. Alien.
“Rachel,” he said, his voice the same as I remembered, even if it was a shade embarrassed and deeper than it should be for such a slight frame.
Nervous, I focused on his eyes. “Are you okay?”
Apparently not hearing my dream thought, Al turned around to look sadly at the rock he’d been sitting on. “I broke it,” he said. “They can’t leave until I fix him, and if they stay, they’re going to die. They need the sun . . .
