Pale Demon

Oliver crossed his arms over his chest, the dim light catching the Möbius-strip pin on his lapel. His circle looked well drawn, and with a little effort I might have been able to break it. But the reality was, I just didn’t care.

“Hi, Vivian,” I said in greeting, not surprised that they were treating me like this. I’d saved her life, and here I was, circled like an animal. Hearing my bitter sarcasm, she dropped her gaze, ashamed. The last witch on the floor shivered, showing a masculine arm and blood-matted hair. The coven was down two witches. What had happened?

“Drop your circle before I throw you into it!” Pierce said stridently. “Rachel is not a demon!”

Again, Oliver made a grunt of negation, peering at me as if I were a bug, not a person he’d condemned three days ago. “No,” he said, his voice rough, as if he’d been yelling. “If we let her out before she agrees to do what we want, she won’t do it.”

I couldn’t help my snicker at that, and I shifted my weight to my other foot, wishing I had something on my feet other than socks. It was cold in here, and I wrapped my arms around my short-sleeved shirt. “I got news for you, Ollie,” I said. “I’m not going to do what you want anyway.”

Eyes wide, Pierce spun, making his coattails furl. “We are asking for help, not demanding it.” His eyes shifted to mine, pleading for forgiveness. “I’m sorry. The circle was not my idea.”

But you went along with it. “You think if you ask for my help, I’ll give it for free?” I said, hearing my voice echo as my arms dropped to my sides. “After you let an elf curse me and label me a demon? In front of everyone?” Oh yeah. I have to talk to Trent. I looked at Oliver, seeing not a hint of guilt. “After you promised me a clean slate?”

Pierce dropped his head, hearing my rebuke. Hell, I knew it had been a slip of his tongue that had put me here and him working for the coven. It hadn’t been intentional, but here I was, in a circle, and there he was, outside it. God, I was stupid. Tired, I was putting up a hand and glancing to the empty seats when a rumble echoed through the air. They all hunched, as if expecting the roof to come down, and the cowering witch shook, curling deeper into himself if that was at all possible. Leon?

“What happened? Where are the rest of you?” I asked, fatigue lapping about my ankles.

Vivian came forward into the light. Dressed in jeans and a sweater, she looked tired, as if she’d seen too much in too short a time. “We lost them,” she said, her expression closed. “Ku’Sox…”

A pulse of adrenaline lit through me and my eye twitched when her words cut off in heartache. Ku’Sox. Why am I not surprised?

“He killed them,” Pierce said bluntly. “Ate them as they screamed for succor. Then he ate their souls as they watched. Consumed them. That was yesterday. It could have been averted if the rest of these lily-livered ’fraidy- cats had listened to me sooner.”

They want me to fight Ku’Sox for them, I mused, seeing the power outage and the smell of cracked cement in an entirely new way. A thread of adrenaline-laced hope pulled through me, making me stand a little straighter. They wanted something from me. I wanted something from them. But first, I needed to talk to Trent.

I felt my lips curve up in a not-nice smile that made Oliver swear and Vivian swallow hard. Pierce alone seemed to have expected the nasty expression of confident, bitter satisfaction that I knew I was now wearing. I’d seen it on Al, and only now did I understand it. We were all fools. All of us.

“Ku’Sox tearing apart your reality isn’t my problem,” I said as I eyed my nails and wished I knew how to change my clothes into something suitably overbearing and sexy. “Who wants to banish me? Send me home?”

I hit the last word hard with sarcasm, and Pierce gave Oliver a dark look that said to shut up and stop his muttering about demons. “Rachel, please,” he asked. “He’s destroying everything, killing people. You beat him before.”

“Yeah?” I said, and Pierce lowered his eyes. “That was when I was a witch. Where are Ivy and Jenks?”

All bluster and overdone emotion, Oliver strode forward until the hissing kerosene light made harsh shadows on his face. “You filthy demon. You’re in my circle, and you’ll do what I say!”

I tapped the barrier between us to make his aura run from the dimple of impact. It held firm, even if only Oliver was holding it. He looked old. Tired. Not a surprise if he’d been fighting Ku’Sox for three days. “It doesn’t work that way,” I said lightly. “The thing about demons is they can say no, and I don’t like you.” Smiling wickedly, I leaned close, the barrier humming a complaint. “It’s called Let’s Make a Deal for a reason. You shunned me, sent fairies to burn my church, tried to kill me and my friends. Then you made me drag my sorry ass clear across the continent chasing a promise of forgiveness that I won from you fair and square, only to have you curse me and call me a demon. And now, when you’re in trouble, you have the balls to ask for my help?” I shook my head, not believing that Trent had anticipated all of this and prepared for it.

“What on earth might you have that I want…hmmmm, I wonder,” I mused sarcastically, glancing at each of them in turn, Oliver in hate, Vivian in disappointment, and Pierce…well, he looked too tired to be sorry, but I could see his guilt.

“I can’t begin to make reparation for this,” Pierce said, his old-world accent ringing clear. “And I’m prepared to make amends any way you see possible. I wasn’t of a mind that me winning the coven seat would put you in such straits. This was never my intent. It simply…happened.”

It simply happened. The story of my life, and I slumped.

The three coven witches watched me with varying degrees of hope, shame, and disgust, and I licked my lips. Three days ago, I would have said, “Give me my citizenship, and I’ll take Ku’Sox on,” but after having spent three days sleeping under Al’s protection because he thought I was vulnerable, I was having second, third, and fourth thoughts.

But the chance to walk away from the ever-after was irresistible.

Shifting my weight to my other foot, I cocked my hip, heart pounding. “You want me to get rid of Ku’Sox? Just what are you willing to give—Ollie? Or maybe I should say whom?”

Oliver’s eyes widened. “Me?” he stammered, and I almost laughed.

“You?” I said derisively as Vivian steeled her expression back to neutrality. “You’re not good for anything but bussing tables. What I want is all charges on me and my team dropped, every hint of my shunning exonerated, and I want you to publicly apologize to me and my family while standing in Fountain Square,” I said, looking straight at Oliver. “I want what you promised me last year, and I want you to kiss my lily. White. Ass.”

“Never,” he whispered, and the slump of cloth in the shadows scrambled to life.

“Give her what she wants!” Leon shrieked, launching himself at Oliver. “You promised it would be okay!” As they went down, Leon straddled him and his hands thumped Oliver’s head into the stage floor. “You said to vote with you, and it would be okay, and now Wyatt and Amanda are dead! They are dead, Oliver! He ate them!”

“Leon! Stop!” Vivian cried, grabbing the hysterical man and pulling him away. Oliver’s foot hit the circle, and it fell with a tingling wash. Immediately I stepped over the line, back and away from them and into the shadows. No one but Pierce saw. Everyone else was focused on Oliver, who was getting to his feet and holding his face where Leon had hit his head on the floor, his eyes dark and venomous.

“You promised!” Leon raged, huddled again and looking like a feral beast. “I trusted you. We all trusted you. And now we’re all dead!”

In the distance, the sound of falling rock grew and died, and the earth trembled.

“Where’s my team?” I asked, missing Jenks’s wiseass comments and Ivy’s steady support. “But most of all,” I said, free of the circle, “where is Trent Kalamack?”

Oliver blanched, his next words choked back when he realized I was free. “You want him? You want us to give him to you? My God, you are a demon.”

Pierce bowed his head, but I didn’t care what he thought. I didn’t want Trent for a familiar, I wanted five minutes alone with him to find out what I’d done wrong with that curse…or punch him in the mouth. It depended on what came out of it when I saw him. Give Ku’Sox the curse, he says. You’re the only one who can, he says. Stupid elf.

Oliver started in on his overdone theatrics—something about getting me in a circle or they would all die—and Vivian left Leon looking at his blood-caked fingernails and mumbling to himself to argue with Oliver about morality and reality. I didn’t see what the big deal was if I was in a circle or not. They were probably all going to die if