want to stay?”
His grumble was enough for me, and I looked behind him at the door, feeling like two kids behind the barn playing show-and-tell. Ivy and Jenks were going to be mad. Ceri would be ticked that I didn’t ask for her help. Quen would say I was foolish for not asking for his assistance. But I didn’t want to endanger them. Ivy and Jenks were moving on without me, and that was good. Ceri had her life with her children before her, and I wouldn’t risk that. Quen was a dragon, ready to swoop in and save me, but leaving me still afraid. Trent . . . Trent was good enough to help, and bad enough to not be a crutch. Perhaps more important, I
Goose bumps tingled up my arms when I recognized the cap and ribbon in his hand. “Thank you,” I whispered, remembering the vengeance of the lines running through me with no aura between me and the energy of creation. “Is it going to hurt?”
“No.” His word crisp and short, he put his cap on with a quickness that dared me to say he looked funny. He seemed so different, I didn’t know what to think anymore. The ribbon went around his neck, over his collar and down his front. It swung as he dragged his chair into the line to face me squarely. I should have been able to feel the line, see the ever-after with my second sight, but I was dead inside.
“Why am I even here if you won’t let me do anything?” he grumbled as he settled himself, his knees inches from mine.
I was starting to shake hard enough for him to notice, but I couldn’t stop, and I should be shaking. Why was he here? Because he was strong enough to watch my back, and weak enough that it would be me solving this, not him. But I couldn’t tell him that.
“Give me your hands,” he said, and my eyes jerked to his. His need to do this shone in them. He was itching to give something back to Al for his missing fingers, itching to prove to the demon that he wasn’t a doormat, a familiar, a commodity, but someone the demon needed to take seriously. God, I knew how that felt. How was I going to keep him alive?
My fingers slipped into his, and we clasped hands, my knuckles resting on the cool glass of my scrying mirror. His hands were cool, mine were shaking, and he gave me a little squeeze, jerking my attention back up.
“Don’t let go until I say,” he said as I stared at him, startled. But he had closed his eyes, his lips moving in something that wasn’t Latin, wasn’t English. The syllables slipped through the folds of my brain like slushy ice, chilling and numbing, the musical rise and fall like unsung music, the wind in the trees, the growth of a tree to the sun. Mesmerizing.
Trent’s eyes opened as if having felt it in me.
My eyes widened as my fingers gripped his tighter. I suddenly realized something was stirring in my chi. I stiffened as the sensation of a painful lifting rose through me, the delicious hurt of the old being peeled back to expose new skin, hurting from the first breath of wind. Like liquid light sliding around corners, ley-line energy coursed into me, trickling enticingly slowly as it tripped every synapse one by one.
My breath came in a heave as I suddenly realized it tasted like Trent’s soul, his energy spilling into me in ever-increasing waves. Frantic, I looked at Trent, his eyes shut, his lips moving as he chanted, his fingers starting to shake as they held mine. I could do nothing. He had told me not to let go.
My breath came in, and I held it. I could feel the charm he had bespelled me with begin to unravel, laying within me, still, like a knot that had been loosened and needed only to be pulled apart. His energies mixed with mine, gathered in my chi until there was enough for him to ease me back into alignment with the rest of the universe. It was colored from his soul, both light and dark, mixing without mixing, swirling with my natural energies until the two were one.
And finally it reached the tipping point. With a wrench, I felt a tug, and like two drops of water, my soul was realigned with reality.
Trent’s eyes flashed open, wide and wondering as his chanting stopped. “My God,” he whispered, suddenly tense and shocked. The heat of the charm lay in his eyes, the promise of what could be—what might be if I could trust another with my heart again. And it hurt me knowing it wasn’t mine.
“Is it done?” I said, feeling the pain of unfulfilled passion. I ached for it to be gone.
Trent licked his lips, shaking his head.
I gasped, Trent’s fingers tightening on mine as the sudden power of the lines flooded me, pure and untainted. They rang my soul like a bell, bathing us in sound inside and out. I gloried in it, my head flung back as I breathed it in, feeling it pool in me like gold, washing away my lingering headache and tingling all the way down to my toes. It was glorious, and I almost cried as I realized how deeply I’d cut myself off. Never. Never again.
Exhilarated, I looked at Trent. My eyes opened wide as I saw him sitting before me with his head down and his aura glowing about him like a second shadow, magnificent and beautiful, not a hint of demonic taint, the tragic streaks of red running through the brilliant haze of gold.
And then I realized he was clenched in pain.
My eyes went to our clasped hands. “I’m sorry!” I said, trying to pull away only to have his hands grip mine more tightly.
“Dampen it so I can think,” he gasped, and I did, still able to feel the currents ebb and flow. My God, why had I done this to myself?
Trent looked up, a sheen of sweat on his brow.
Breathless, I sat up. Eyes wide, I looked at the bracelet. It still hung on my wrist, but the words were gone and the metal had turned black. The spell was broken. Frantic, I pushed it to my hand, wanting it off. The metal pinched my skin, and then with a wrench, I felt the metal seem to expand and it slipped over my folded fingers and was gone.
My heart pounded. I stared at the ring of black metal as it wobbled to a halt and sat on the carpet in a fake patch of sunlight.
“Better?”
Blinking away tears, I focused on Trent. He was easing back, looking wan. I nodded, unable to find the words. I could feel the lines—all of them—though the sensation was fading. They sang in me like the heartbeat of the sun, a thousand tones all harmonizing to one om of sound. And then they all slowly vanished with the sensation of sparkles, leaving only the soft hum of the line we were sitting inside.
“Thank you,” I said, then grimaced. Now it would get difficult.
On my lap, the sparkling line of the scrying mirror glittered, caging the ruby image it was throwing back into reality. My fingers ached where they rested on the smooth surface, and I could feel the latent energy pressing into my legs. The bracelet was dead, the mirror was alive. Everything had shifted. Now all we had to do was convince Al to let me stay . . . and everything would be fine.
Trent was rubbing his hands, the white marks of where I’d gripped him too tightly obvious. “I’m sorry,” I said, and a heavy weariness edged his grim expression.
“For this?” He held up his hand, the white pressure marks easing.
I shook my head, afraid to bring up my second sight to see Al waiting for me already. “For what happens next.”
Silent, he got up to stand beside me. He avoided my eyes, and I wondered what he’d felt as his soul had crept into my own through the cracks and crevices, bursting the wall that he’d put around it. He was still looking at his hand, probably remembering Al taking his fingers off in an attempt to move him to the ever-after one ounce of flesh at a time. A pang of tension that had nothing to do with talking to Al went through me, and I took his hand and turned it over. “When this is over, can I fix that?” I asked him even as he stiffened, surprised that I’d touched him.
His posture eased. “If you like,” he said as he pulled his hand away.
“Are you sure you can cure the demons?” I asked, and he nodded, shakily moving to take up a position behind me as I put my free hand on the mirror. Al would listen. He’d give me anything for that.
