I felt dizzy. 'Name only,' I breathed, putting a hand on the cold cement to ground myself. 'You leave me alone. My family, too. Stay away from my mom, you SOB.'
'Priceless,' Al mocked. 'No. If I am taking you, you will be here.' He touched the ground by his knee. 'In the ever-after. With me.'
'Absolutely not.'
Al took a breath, then leaned forward with his brow furrowed, as if he was trying to impress me with the weight of his words. 'You don't understand, witch,' he said, hammering in the last word. 'There hasn't been the chance to teach someone worth the salt of their blood in a very long time. If we are going to play this game, then we will play it.'
He leaned back, and I remembered to breathe.
'I can't claim you as a student if you aren't with me,' he said, gesturing flamboyantly, his earlier mood of seriousness replaced with his usual dramatic flair. 'Be reasonable. I know you can be. If you try very, very hard.'
I didn't like his mocking tone. 'I'll visit you one night a week,' I countered.
He eyed me over his glasses, his gaze rising to the coming sun. 'One night a week off, and the rest of the time, you're with me.'
My thoughts went to Trent. I could walk away from this right now, but I wouldn't be able to live with myself. 'I'll give you one twenty-four-hour period—a full day and night every week. Take it or leave it.' Damn it, Trent, you owe me big.
'Two,' he countered, and I stifled a tremor. I had him over a barrel, having shown him his freedom and the status having a teachable student would bring him. Still, he could say no, and then neither of us would have anything. And I was hoping that I might get something else out of him before we were done.
'One,' I said, sticking to my original offer. 'And I want to know how to jump the lines immediately. I will not be stranded with no way home.'
A curious light flickered in his eyes. It wasn't lust, it wasn't anticipation. I didn't know what it was. 'We will spend our time as I see fit,' he said, then leered, completely wiping out the deeper emotion I'd seen in him. 'Any way I want,' he added, licking his ruddy lips.
'No sex,' I said, heart pounding. 'I'm not sleeping with you. Forget it.' It was now or never. 'And I want that mark of yours removed,' I blurted. 'Gratis. Call it a signing bonus.'
His lips parted and he laughed until he realized I was serious. 'That would leave you with only Newt's mark,' he said, amused. 'Her claim on you would be stronger than mine. Not a healthy place to be, when one is in the ever-after and…vulnerable.'
Okay. Good point. Backtrack a little. 'Then buy Newt's mark for me,' I said, shaking inside, 'and take it off. You want me as an apprentice, I want some insurance.'
Face clouding, he thought about it, and I got really scared when his expression shifted to a devilish delight. 'Only if you give me my name back…Madam Algaliarept. Do that, and we have a deal.'
I shuddered upon hearing the terms come from his lips, and I didn't care that he saw it. His grin deepened. But considering that I wouldn't have to deal with Newt ever again or risk being summoned into Al's circle, it wasn't a bad arrangement. For either of us. 'You don't get your name until Newt's mark is gone,' I countered.
He looked at me, then turned to the bright horizon, his smoked glasses going even blacker. 'The sun is about to rise,' he murmured distantly, and I held my breath, not knowing if he agreed or not.
'So are we doing this?' I asked. There was a jogger at the far end of the park, and his dog was barking furiously at us.
'One more question,' he said, bringing his gaze back to me. 'Tell me what it was like, being trapped in someone's bubble like a demon.'
My face screwed up at the memory. 'I hated it,' I said, and a small noise slipped from him, rising up from someplace deep inside him where only he knew his thoughts. 'It was degrading—infuriating that a worm like Tom had control of me. I wanted to…scare him so bad he wouldn't ever do it again.'
Al's expression shifted when what I had said hit me and I put a hand to my chest. Damn it back to the Turn, I understood him. He hadn't asked because he hadn't known how I felt. He asked so I would see we were the same. God, help me. Please.
'Don't do that to me again,' he said. 'Ever.'
My stomach cramped. He was asking for me to trust him out of a circle, and it was the scariest thing I'd ever had to do. 'Okay,' I whispered. 'You got it.'
Al looked at the bubble of ever-after over his head and tugged the lace of his cuffs down. 'Come here.'
At that instant, light spilled over the rim of earth surrounding Cincinnati. My scratched circle was still there, but Al no longer was. Shaking, I dropped the barrier of ever-after and brought my second sight into focus. Taking a breath, I stepped into the line to find him standing right where I'd left him, smiling with his hand extended. Around him, or us, rather, slumped the broken city, grass-choked chunks of pavement standing at odd angles thrusting upward from the earth. There was no bridge or ponds. Just dead grass and a red haze. I didn't look behind me to the Hollows as the wind blew grit into my face.
I was standing in a line, balanced between reality and the ever-after. I could go either way. I wasn't his yet. 'One day a week,' I said, knees wobbling.
'I give you Newt's mark, you give me my name,' Al said, then wiggled his fingers as if he needed me to take them to finish the deal. I reached for it, and at the last moment, Al's glove melted away, and I found myself gripping his hand. I stifled my first impulse to jerk away, feeling the hard calluses and the warmth. It was done. Now I only had to roll with the surprises.
'Rachel!' came a call with the slamming of a car door. 'God, no!'
It had been my mom's voice, and my hand still in Al's, I turned, unable to see anything.
Al pulled me into him, and numb, I felt his arm curve possessively about my waist. 'Too late,' he whispered, his breath shifting the hair about my ear, and we jumped.
Thirty-three
The jump through the line hit me like a bucket of ice water, an uncomfortable slap right from the start with the shock turning into the sensation of being wet where you don't want to be and left dripping. I felt my body shatter—that was the shock—and then my thoughts tightened into a ball around my soul to hold it together—that was the miserable, dripping-wet part. That I was holding my soul together and not Al was a surprise to both of us.
Good, came Al's grudging, almost worried thought rippling over the protective bubble I had somehow made about my psyche. And then came the push back into existence.
Again the bucket of ice water hit my thoughts as he shoved me out of the line. I tried to see how he did it, coming away without a clue. But at least I had managed to keep from spreading my thoughts over the entire continent crisscrossed with ley lines—the stretchy stuff that kept the ever-after from vanishing, if Jenks was right.
I gasped as I felt my lungs form. Dizzy, I fell to my hands and knees. 'Ow,' I said as I looked at the dirty white tile, then brought my head up at the hammering of noise. We were in a large room. Men in suits were everywhere standing or sitting in orange chairs—waiting.
'Get up,' Al grumbled, bending to bodily yank me upright.
I rose, arms and legs flopping until I found my feet. Wide-eyed, I stared at the irate people dressed in a vast array of styles. Al jerked me into motion, and my mouth dropped as I realized we had popped into existence upon what looked like an FIB emblem. Holy crap, it even looked like the FIB reception room. Minus the demons, of course.
Feeling displaced and unreal, I turned to where the doors to the street would have been, seeing only a blank wall and more waiting demons. 'Is this the FIB?' I stammered.
'It's someone's idea of a joke,' Al said, his voice tight and his accent impeccable. 'Get off the pad unless you want someone's elbow in your ear.'
