Pale Demon

into him. Punching through his thin film of surprise, I grasped the ley line…and I pulled.

“No!” he shrieked, realizing his mistake.

My back arched as the power flooded in, painful and delicious. I could hear Al cry out, but it was as if I swam in glory itself, and I pulled him to me, closer, wanting more, arcing it through me back to the line, burning clean and bright, lighting the smut in me with pure fire from the gods.

The soft pop of displaced air almost went unnoticed as my soul chimed, tuned to the ley line I was drowning Al in, but a faint whisper of self-preservation caused me to open my eyes. Everything was bathed in a silvery white light. Everything, that is, but the flat foot in the purple slipper headed for me.

I tried to disentangle myself from Al, and the foot hit me, flinging me across the room like I was a rag doll. I hit a bookcase, numb. My fingers splayed over my chest, and I couldn’t breathe. Shit, I think my ribs are broken, I thought, and I slid sideways to the floor, my cheek burning on the carpet.

“You lied to me!” Newt screamed, and I tried to cry out in pain as she lifted me up and slammed me against the shelf again. “I killed my sisters for you!”

My mouth was working, but nothing was coming out. My head lolled, and my focus was blurry. The line I’d been connected to was gone, and my gore rose.

And then I was screaming as the line I had yanked through Al was arcing through me.

Tulpa! I thought, trying to spindle it, and I feebly pushed at Newt to get her hands off me.

“Newt! Stop! That’s Rachel!” I heard Al croak hoarsely, and the sharp sound of flesh smacking flesh. The world lurched, and I hit the carpet again.

I lay on the floor in a crumpled heap, my fingers rubbing the soft bumps of the carpet. My breath went in and out, and it felt good. It felt good not to be on fire. My head pounded, and I pushed most of the spindled energy out, sagging in relief.

“Newt, it’s not Ku’Sox!” Al shouted again, and I heard a bang and smelled ozone and the acrid scent of burnt books.

“I killed my sisters for him!” Newt raged. “Get out of my way, Gally!”

Al’s soft hand touched my shoulder, and I jerked, managing to sit up. Al was standing beside me in his robe, the hem trembling. Newt was in front of us, wearing her purple martial-arts robe, her funny, tall-sided hat almost in the fire. She had hair again, the straight black strands cut short in a pageboy style, and her long, ugly feet were bare. It was hard to tell what she was looking at since her eyes were black, but I was pretty sure she was looking at me, hatred pouring from her.

“This isn’t Ku’Sox,” Al said, his voice shaking, and I wondered why he had stopped her. “It’s Rachel. She smells like Ku’Sox because she fought him. It’s not Ku’Sox!”

Newt looked at me. Then her black eyes went to Al’s. “She survived him? Are you sure? Maybe Ku’Sox is wearing her skin. He does that.”

Al took a breath, exhaling long and low. His hand touching my shoulder left me, and I sat where I was, slumped over my knees, my hair in my face. I had tried to hurt Al to get him to leave me alone, and I think I might have gone too far. Drew a line through him like a familiar and almost fried his little kitty soul.

“It’s her,” Al said ruefully, and I looked up to see him shuffle to the arrangement of furniture before the fire and fall into the chair farthest from me.

Newt’s expression became one of familiar confusion. “Have I forgotten something again?” she asked suspiciously. “It appeared as if she was killing you. Or were you two…?” She hesitated, then put a hand to her mouth and laughed. “Gally! You dog! You tried to seduce her?”

“She’s been living in my kitchen for almost a year,” he said sullenly. “Forgive a man for testing the waters. She wasn’t screaming. And my name is Al now. Remember?”

“Testing the waters!” I echoed him, ticked. “You almost had me on the floor.” I’d be furious if I hadn’t given him back as much as he gave me. God! Men were pigs.

Al frowned, having to look over the couch between us. “You looked like you were enjoying yourself. I know I was.”

“And that’s why you were screaming like a little girl, right?” I barked, then hunched into myself and held my ribs. Ow. Yeah, I had liked it. But not with him, never.

“Is it a pajama party, Gally?” Newt asked, and a wash of black ever-after coated her. My chi ached as Newt shrank until the ever-after fell away, showing her looking like a child in bright red pajamas. Her hair was gone, and her eyes were hollow. She looked ill, and in sudden shock, I realized she was one of the kids in the brat pack at the hospital—the one who had forgiven me for doing black magic. She’d died with one of my stuffed animals clutched to her. And Newt wore her image as if it meant nothing.

“That’s not nice,” I said, and Newt smiled like a beautiful bald angel with the wisdom of the world in her, hurting me even more.

Newt laughed again, this time with a high, childlike innocence, making me shudder and forget what I was mad about. She was coming toward me with her little hand extended to help me up, and I got to my feet, not wanting her to touch me.

“I was trying to provoke you into defending yourself,” Al said loudly from the couch. Rubbing a hand over his hair, he looked both sheepish and worried. “I’m worried about Ku’Sox. Newt, since you are here, what’s your opinion? Is she reasonably safe?”

“Seeing as she was halfway to killing you, I’d say she has a sporting chance,” Newt said in her child voice, and I stifled another shudder.

“That’s great,” I snarled, limping away from Newt and toward the fire. God, my life sucked. “So I can go back now, right?” I said sullenly as I picked up my scrying mirror and sat down. Crap, I was sore. I was probably going to have to get my ribs wrapped. This was going to look swell tomorrow at the trial.

“Oooh! Marshmallows?” Distracted, Newt almost skipped to the overflowing bowl beside the fire, the visage of a dying child somehow suiting her.

“Al?” I prompted, holding my ribs. I think he’d about crushed my knee, too.

Al slumped in his chair until his butt almost slid off the cushion. His robe had fallen open, and I couldn’t help but look. Dude… He was hung like a horse, his ruddy complexion almost black down there. No way was he getting his tackle anywhere near me.

“Fine,” he grumped, oblivious that he was waving in the wind. “If Newt says you’re reasonably safe, you can go,” he said sullenly. “You’ll be back in twenty-four hours anyway.”

Yes! I thought in victory. I was going to have to take a long shower to get rid of the burnt-amber stench, but I imagined they’d bring up more shampoo if I called down.

Newt turned from where she was kneeling in her pajamas before the fire, a lightly browned marshmallow at the end of her stick. “Bring a ruler with you when you return,” she said, her voice high and childlike. “The ever-after is shrinking. But I can’t prove it unless I have a tape measure from reality. All the ones here are shrinking, too.”

Scrying mirror pressed to me, I watched Al cringe. “Shrinking?” I asked.

“Slowly,” she said, her pinky sticking out as she tentatively squished the marshmallow to test how done it was. “The rate will quicken exponentially as we have less and less to lose. The ebb and flow of energy between reality and the ever-after has shifted. It’s not all coming back. There’s a hole somewhere.”

She looked at me with her black eyes, and I shivered.

Al sat completely up and tugged his robe closed. Thank God. “The lines have been balanced for eons. Nothing has changed,” he said, but his voice was too sure, too confident.

Smiling with a dead child’s face and beauty, Newt awkwardly sat cross-legged before the fire. “You haven’t been to the surface lately.” Turning away, she put the toasting fork back into the flames, unsatisfied with the puff’s doneness.

“I try to avoid it,” Al huffed.

“The buildings,” Newt continued as if he hadn’t said anything, “are falling at an astounding rate.”

Remembering the buildings in Vegas’s ever-after, I took a breath, and Al shot me a look to keep quiet. Worried, I felt the bumps of the lines on my scrying mirror. “Buildings always fall,” Al said, his eyes darting to his books.

“Yes, Gally,” she said, her voice having a childish lisp. “But now they are on