Chapter Twenty-Five
Frightened, I stood amid a smattering of exclamations. Some were against me, but most were protesting Ku'Sox's presence. Clearly he wasn't much liked, but there was far less anger than I'd expect from a demon they had imprisoned in the next reality over, even if the demons at the informal bar fire were enthusiastically exchanging bets. The drums had stopped, and loud conversation had taken its place. I was scared, but Newt was smiling deviously as she stood my bench upright from where it had been, pushed over when I'd found my feet.
In the flickering oil light, Dali took a dramatic step back, his sleeves dropping to his elbows when he held his hands up in placation. "Calm down, or I'll sling all your asses out of here!" he bellowed, and the noise was cut by about half. "I agree that the question of her status should be settled." He smiled cattily at Al. "Isn't that why you're here?"
Newt toasted me to show her support as Dali smiled at me with false benevolence. My eyes closed as I finally understood what was going on. My standing was in question and needed to be settled before a gathering of my peers. If I wasn't a demon, I was a familiar. And if I was a familiar, I was in deep shit.
And there I'd been, saying I wasn't a demon.
Ku'Sox shoved his way through the camels and bales of cloth until he stood with the rough-hewn table between us. His steel gray hair was slicked back and he was wearing a masculine reflection of my attire. Beads clicking, he looked me up and down, his expression one of disgust, not a flicker of concern that I'd almost burned him alive in Margaritaville. My pulse raced as I recognized the barely leashed hatred from both Al and Newt as Ku'Sox started in on a harsh harangue aimed at me. He wouldn't be tucking me under his arm and popping out-unless he thought he could get away with it-so I was safe. Sort of. Demons were wimps, more inclined to take their rivals down with red tape than a physical approach. They only beat up people they knew couldn't fight back.
Trent wanted me to curse him. Why should I risk it? I thought as Ku'Sox started demeaning Al's reputation, bringing up events that had happened thousands of years ago and still made Al red with anger. Why should I curse Ku'Sox to be stuck in the same reality I was in now? But then I hesitated, tuning out Ku'Sox as I thought a little more deeply. If I shifted the curse to him, as Trent thought I could, then I wouldn't be stuck here at all. I'd still be shunned in reality, but there were ways around that. Right? Right?
Regaining my ability to be in reality, even in snatches, was a small thing, but after having imagined living in the ever-after without ever seeing the sun, Jenks, or Ivy again, I fastened on it like a lifeline. My foot twitched, and Newt slid her black-eyed gaze to me, nodding at the look of desperate thought I must now be wearing. Everyone else was focused on Ku'Sox, raving about purity and half-breeds polluting the genetic pool.
My eyes fell from Newt to the hard-packed earth, and I lightly tapped a line, glad my oiled hair wouldn't float and give me away. The barest hint of ever-after seeped into me, not enough to be noticed by anyone, but I was sure Newt felt it. She was jiggling her bejeweled foot, black eyes edged in kohl sliding from me to Ku'Sox, the barest hint of a wicked smile replacing her anger.
My knees were wobbling, and an odd feeling was sifting through me, almost a ringing in my ears or soul. Slowly I searched my theoretical self, surprised when I could feel the curse Trent had put on me. It hadn't been with me very long, and the alien, greasy feel of the elven aftertaste made it easy to sense, like a faint ache. Even odder was that the curse seemed as if it lay in my chi like shavings of iron, all of them aligning themselves to orient on Ku'Sox, like a flower to the sun. It had been created for him, like the focus had been created for the Weres. It wanted to go back to him.
Damn, I might be able to do this.
My shoulders stiffened, and I scrambled to remember the words Trent had used to tap into the communal collective and set the curse. One phrase to transfer it, one to sever the bond and prevent it from coming back. Something about deserving punishment?
Newt was watching me as Ku'Sox grandstanded, gesturing as he maligned my mother, my father, and Al all in the same breath. I gathered the curse together in my chi-every last bit-and held it in my fist, the pressure of it aching and throbbing like I was holding an exploded bomb.
Si peccabas, poenam meres. That was the invocation phrase. I knew it. I could do this!
"That is not a demon!" Ku'Sox shouted as if in finale, spinning in a flamboyant circle, making his purple robe furl. "And it should be destroyed!"
"Prove it!" I shouted, lunging. The curse glowed like black fire in my hand, and I jumped at him, right across the table.
Newt grabbed the plate of cheese and yanked it to safety. Al's wineglass wasn't so lucky, and the wine spilled like blood over the rough wood. The candle flared, and I hit the hanging lamp, sending flaming oil splattering on the watching demons. A cry of alarm went up and the sound of sliding benches and the sudden pulls on ley lines spun through me like threads of glass.
Ku'Sox's eyes widened, and then I had him, my hand around his throat as we crashed to the floor.
Si peccabas, poenam meres! I thought desperately, seeing my freedom in Ku'Sox's shocked expression.
Elation filled me as I felt the painful sensation of pinpricks in reverse as the curse left me. It was working, and I writhed as the curse soaked into Ku'Sox while he screamed.
"Get her off!" Ku'Sox shouted, and someone grabbed the back of my shirt, pulling me away. "Get her off me!"
"No!" I howled. I wasn't done yet. I hadn't fixed it into him! Facilis descensus Tartaros! I thought frantically, and my eyes widened as I felt the curse stretch between us like a rubber band. But with a snap that made Newt jump, it pulled from Ku'Sox, even as it had wanted to stay, cleaving to me instead. I'd done something wrong. It hadn't worked!
"No, no, no!" I raged as the rising imbalance ebbed to nothing and the surrounding demons laughed, thinking I was simply trying to scratch Ku'Sox's eyes out. "Let me go, you idiots!" I'd done it wrong! I'd done something wrong or it would have worked and I would have had him!
Al had an arm around my middle, physically holding me against him as my feet slipped on the reed mats while I struggled for purchase. "No fighting in Dalliance, Rachel," he crooned, and I shoved his hand off me as soon as I got my weight over my feet again.
"You see me!" I shouted at Ku'Sox, glad I'd finally gotten rid of that headdress thing, now broken on the floor. "If you ever touch me again, I'll lay you out!" I threatened him, almost spitting in frustration.
They only laughed. Except for Al, standing nervously beside me, and Newt, who had felt what I had tried to do. Dali was at the outskirts, knowing something had happened but not what. And Ku'Sox, of course, who was sallow faced, clearly knowing how close it had been. Why hadn't it worked?
Slowly Ku'Sox regained his pompous air as he shook off the good-natured offers of assistance, but he would meet my eyes only in quick glances, equal amounts of caution and loathing in him. But I'd seen him screaming like a little girl, and I knew he'd been terrified.
He ought to be afraid. I'd almost had the perv. Now it would be harder. He was warned, and I'd lost my easy chance. "You dare to call me less of a demon than you?" I exclaimed, pissed as I shook in anger with nothing between us but air. "I'm not the one doing the bidding of a lame-ass elf!" I said, pointing at him. "You owe your freedom to an elf! One that I let go!"
The surrounding jeers and calls from the watching demons rose high, and Ku'Sox frowned as the helping hands fell away. In the distance, I heard a fox bark, and the puddle of light grew when someone stilled the wildly swinging lamp and relit it with a tweak on a line.
"An elf?" Dali was leaning casually against a support pole. "Ku'Sox, you owe your freedom to Rachel's castoffs?"
It wasn't the angle I'd been going for, but it made Ku'Sox angry, his eyes squinting as he bent to beat the dust from his robes. "That thing is a witch," he said, pointing at me. "A stunted double X that Algaliarept is dressing up like a demon to further his pathetic attempt at familiar procurement."
"Pathetic?" Al drawled as he sat down, leaving me standing alone. "You've been gone too long, you little zit pus. I'm more of a snag artist than you'll ever be, and I know talent when I see it. Rachel may be born from a witch, but she is a demon as much as you are a pain in the ass with the social skills of a dog. Still eating souls, Ku'Sox? That's like eating God's shit."
"You know nothing!" Ku'Sox shouted, red faced as the surrounding demons laughed. "I'm stronger than all of you! I can take this world and destroy it! Open a hole to reality and drain this world to nothing until you're bumping around in a universe the size of a closet and you all get sucked into oblivion!"
The conversations stilled, and Dali cleared his throat in the sudden silence. Ku'Sox stopped, the hem of his robe swinging as he dared anyone to comment, his chin high and a defiant gleam in his blue, goat-slitted eyes. Every demon in the place wore hatred and fear on his shadowed, candlelit, ruddy face. And that, of course, was why they didn't kill him. If they tried and failed, he might destroy the ever-after, laughing all the way to the sunny side of reality and his survival. Their prodigal son was fucking insane.
"You're not stronger than me," Newt said into the quiet, and Ku'Sox's eyes narrowed.
"Aren't you dead yet, you old hag?" he grumbled.
The demons started to whisper, and Dali's slippers were a soft hush on the reeds as he came forward. He was looking at me with speculation, and now I knew why. Is she the one? Is it her? What he meant was, am I a demon? Can I kill Ku'Sox?
"Test-tube brat," Al said as he stood his empty wineglass upright with a thump. "DNA degenerate. Magical mistake. You're picking on Rachel because she might be a better demon than you."
"Her?" Ku'Sox exclaimed, and Al simpered at him. "I'm the way back to our rebirth, and you will respect that! Me! Not her! She's born from a witch. A stunted, damaged witch!"
Newt shifted coyly on her cushion, the only one who hadn't left her seat throughout the entire scene. "No, poor boy, you are a mistake we loved too much to put down. I still think you would have turned out fine if Dali hadn't dropped you when you were but a blastocyst."
"You are deluding yourselves," Ku'Sox said, frowning. "I am your rebirth."
"My dame's ashes," Al muttered. "The poor boy is going to go off now to brood about world domination."
A few of the demons sliding back to their tables laughed, and Ku'Sox flushed in anger.
"Something is wrong with you, my lovely little boy," Newt continued, the silver goblet of wine in her hand as demons drifted away and the tension eased. "In your head. Even demons do not eat souls. Is it because you're worried that you don't have one?"
"I have a soul," Ku'Sox said with a scowl, but I wondered.
"Of course you do. Otherwise, you wouldn't have an aura," Newt said brightly. "Come sit with us."
Oh, there's a good idea, I thought, sitting down between Al and Newt, leaving Ku'Sox to stand by himself.
"That," he said, pointing at me again, "isn't a demon. I need proof. We all do." He looked over the assembled demons. There were more people now than there were tables. They must have been coming in all this time, filling the Mesopotamian darkness with soft mutters and speculation. "It takes more than being able to invoke demon magic to be one," Ku'Sox said. "Do something demonic."
This last had been aimed at me, and my hands clenched in my lap. "Like rip your heart out? Come a little closer."
"Rachel...," Al said as he reached across the table and patted my shoulder a little too hard. God, I felt like I was one of two little kids on a playground.
From her cushion, Newt cleared her throat. "Rachel should make us a new memory."
The surrounding demons exhaled, the sound rising like a sigh of excitement. I turned to her, surprised. You want me to do what?
"Be reasonable, Newt," Al protested, his face suddenly pale. "She's only a few hours old. I haven't had time to teach her anything yet."
"Doesn't matter," Newt said as she ate a grape with an odd precision. "If she's a demon, she can do it."
Al looked deathly worried, and I watched Dali energetically stride to the jukebox and press his hands to it, invoking who knew what as it glowed a hazed black. "Splendid idea," he was muttering. "Rachel, what do you want to call it?"
"Call it?" At a loss, I looked around the table, seeing worry on Al's face and satisfaction on Ku'Sox's. "Call what?"
"Give us a memory," Newt prompted, the beads in her hair clicking. "Only a demon has the mental fortitude to channel enough energy to make a tulpa construct this size. One that anyone can share."
Oh. My. God. I looked at the fake restaurant, the fire, the stars, the smells. "You want me to make something like this?" I squeaked. "Are you nuts? I don't know how to do that!"
"She admits she's not a demon," Ku'Sox proclaimed, and Al's grip on his wineglass became white-knuckled as he hunched against the raised voices around us.
"Lacking a skill doesn't translate into a lack of ability," he growled, but the demons were rearranging the tables, making an open space of sorts, wanting me to try.
Newt's eyes narrowed. "Only a demoness can make a free-existing tulpa, and only a male demon can fix it into reality. I say it's a fair test. Al, put your money where your mouth is. Or should I say where your student is."
I looked wildly from one end of the midnight Mesopotamia to the other, despairing as I realized why Newt had "apologized." She had killed everyone who could do this-except herself. I could not make this! It was immense!
"Of course you can," Newt said as she leaned toward me, almost as if having read my mind. "Making a construct is easy. Every one in that box there was made by my sisters, and they weren't nearly as clever as you." Newt raised her goblet in salute. "That's why I could kill them, you see."
My heart pounded and I sat down before I passed out. "Uh, maybe I shouldn't do it then."
Ku'Sox laughed, but Newt poured her wine into my glass. "That's not why I killed them. But that's why Ku'Sox tricked me into it. To make a lasting tulpa, one that can be stored and lived in, one must have the ability to safely hold more than one's own soul. Demons can't do it. A demoness can. It's on that little extra bit of X gene that they don't have."
I listened to crickets that had turned to dust thousands of years ago on a continent I'd never set foot on. "You're able to hold a soul so you can gestate a baby," I guessed, and she nodded, solemn.
"Ku'Sox is a fool, but he's right. You need to prove yourself, and now is as good a time as any. I will not have your standing in doubt. Don't you agree, Al?" she added lightly.
Al looked sick. "She's rather stupid yet."
"I am not!" I exclaimed, and he pointed at me.
"There, see? She is."
Newt waved a hand at Dali, still standing by the jukebox. "Even a dunce can have a baby. All it needs is stamina and a little imagination. Rachel?"
"I am not stupid!" I said again.
"Shut up," Al hissed as Ku'Sox gleefully ate someone else's cheese. "You don't know what you're doing."
"So teach me," I hissed right back. "Thanks to you, I can't be a witch anymore. I may as well be a demon."
My heart was pounding. God, what was I doing? I only knew that I had to be somewhere, and right now, this was it.
Al stared at me, hope dying in his eyes. "I can't teach you this."
"I can," Newt said, and my breath came fast.
Crap on toast.
"I will," she added, and I swallowed hard. "I will teach you, you will make one, and Al will fix it to reality. I don't have the balls to do that part. Literally."
No one was even whispering. All eyes were on me, the tables full of demons in robes and a small crowd bunched outside, trying to listen in. I hadn't counted on this. I mean, Al I sort of trusted. At least I trusted that he needed me alive and reasonably well. But Newt? She looked sane, and that was worrisome.
"Come here," she prompted. "You want to do this, yes?"
Not really. Taking a slow breath, I stood, feeling weird in these clothes with the green rocks sewn into them. They clinked as I came around the table, Ku'Sox moving in agitation as he stood, looking young next to Dali's tired jadedness. Al's hands were in fists on the table. A bead of sweat trickled down his neck.
"Sit before me, Rachel," Newt prompted, her voice oily, and I wondered if this was how she'd killed her sisters, lulling them. She shifted on her cushion to sit cross-legged, pointing for me to take the tiny bit of padding right in front of her. "Back to me."
Better and better.
My gut was so tight I thought I was going to vomit, and my arms felt like sticks. Everyone was watching as I gingerly sat, pebbles clinking as I tugged a bit of cloth to cover my bare legs. "That's a love," she murmured, and I jumped when she touched my hair.
Someone laughed, and I whipped my head around to see who it had been, but Newt was there, rubbing my forehead from behind, trying to be soothing but only making it worse.
"She's not even going to be able to make a picture on the wall," Ku'Sox predicted.
Al stood, nervous. "Shut up, Ku'Sox, or I'll close your throat for you."
Ku'Sox grinned, pointing to the camels groaning at the outskirts. "Would you like to step outside, old man? I beat your sorry ass before, and I can do it again."
"Ku'Sox, shut up," I said, not liking anyone talking to Al that way, then wondered where my loyalty had come from. But a thread of fear was in Al's motions, so subtle that I didn't know if anyone but perhaps Newt and Dali had noticed.
"He has a right to be afraid," Newt said, leaning forward to whisper in my ear, and I shivered, hardly breathing. "If you can't do this, then you will be a familiar and I will buy you from Al. But I think you can."
"No pressure," I grumbled, and her fingers touching my forehead lifted briefly as she laughed. It sounded weird, her laugh, and I saw more than a few demons grimace.
"Close your eyes, tap a line, and find the collective," Newt said gently.
I took a last look at the faces ringing me, Al with his false confidence, Dali busy calculating the odds, the expressions of hope and doubt on demons I'd never met. I didn't know why they cared one way or the other. Maybe they had a bet going. Maybe they were bored.
"I said," Newt prompted, mildly ticked, "close your eyes."
I closed them, immediately feeling claustrophobic. I tapped a line, wondering what demon had made it, and if he was watching me or dead and turned to dust. I settled myself, plunging into the thick morass of collective thoughts, reeling when I found no one there.
Well, almost no one.
I kicked them out, Newt thought, and I gasped, almost flinging myself out again, but she grabbed my consciousness with a soft thought and hauled me back. You don't want them here, seeing your soul, she explained, and I got the impression of her swimming naked in a sea of stars, enjoying the solitude of a moment alone in her infinity.
My soul? I mused, alarmed, but she only seemed to twine her consciousness around mine, keeping us separate but close, rubbing her energies across me, old and jumbled, like a West Coast ley line.
You don't want the entire collective to see you helpless and vulnerable, she explained, giving me the impression of half-lidded eyes and a sultry whisper. Having Gally see you as such will be punishment enough for almost killing him, I imagine.
Whoa, Al? I thought, worried, and she swam closer, making me nervous as I remembered him pinning me to the bookcase and spilling ley-line energy into me. And then me, slamming his theoretical dick in a drawer. Why him?
Al, she reiterated, seeming bothered she'd forgotten his name again. You want Dali to peel the memory from your thoughts instead? He's likely more skilled at it, and it's often easier for strangers to see us naked than...just what is Gally to you, anyway?
I shook my head, or at least I would have if I had one. I don't know.
Well, when you're done, bring Gally in to separate your construct from your conscious thought. Let him in, Rachel. Ignore the fact that he will see everything. Moment by moment, every little desire and hate you have, your soul sifting through his fingers as he pulls the construct free. What he doesn't see might be left here, so let him entirely in, she thought, and I had a moment of perfect panic. It's rather more intimate than pinning you to the wall for a kiss, she mocked.
I didn't like this, but what choice did I have? It wasn't as if Al hadn't been in my thoughts before. Wait! I don't know what to do! I thought as I felt her start to distance herself.
Newt's consciousness swooped and dipped about mine, making me dizzy. Creating a collective thought real enough to touch is to prove you have the ability to shelter another soul within yours without absorbing it or accidentally changing what should not be changed. I felt a wave of melancholy come from her, dimming the stars. Do you know why demons are born able to twist curses? Their mothers curse them while still in the womb so they can defend themselves from birth. But it takes finesse to lay a curse within another's soul while you're sheltering it within your own. Making a tulpa and allowing another to exist freely in it is the same. It's also why Algaliarept can't remember what he looks like under all that prettiness he shows the world. He can't pick out what is rightfully his and what his mother added. Beautiful, beautiful baby. I never had any, but if I had, I'd have made her look just like you.
It was starting to make sense. Making a construct would show I was fit to be a mother-a mother to demon children I would never have. So...what do I do? I asked, wondering if the demon who had helped Newt make that memory of an upscale bar was still alive, or if she'd killed him. Maybe it had been Minias.
Newt swam in circles around me, sending out ripples to the edge of the empty collective. I do so like it when no one is here. Quiet.
Newt? I prompted, and she returned.
Remember a place. Make it real in your mind. Fill the void here, and Al will separate it from you and make it real. That's their part. All you have to do is let him in.
I had to trust him. Damn it! How did I get here? Just think of a place?
In my mind, it was as if I could see her bobbing in the water before me, silver stars running down her face like water drops. What do you miss the most? Now that you're here forever?
What do I miss? I echoed, thinking immediately of Jenks, Ivy, and my church, but sharing that with the demons wasn't going to happen. My garden in the sun. The sun I would never see again.
Heartache seemed to double me over. The sun. I was going to miss the sun. That was what I could show them. Not the sun in my garden, but somewhere else, where the sun ruled everything, not just now, but for all the past and all the future. I would give the demons a forest so old and dead that only stones remained. I'd give them that, and nothing more.
With a ping that hurt my soul, I felt the memory of the desert rise in me, carrying all the lonely, empty desperation I'd felt when I thought I'd lost Jenks. I hunched, my eyes pinched tightly shut as my heart ached, resonating with the reality that I'd lost everything. Empty. Everything was empty, and the echo of space washed through my skull.
Heat soaked into me like an internal blanket, first frightening, then soothing. The hint of the abandoned ley lines in the desert seemed to glow, dead and gone and useless. From the inside of my eyelids came a reflection of them, etching through the collective like girders bracketing time. And from there, everything built upon itself, the entire desert melting back into existence. The chirp of insects; the soft click of a beetle; the wind pushing against me, oily and slippery, not recognizing me as I stood in the middle of a lost field of power and begged for a miracle.
The memory resonated in me, pulsing from me like a wave. It cascaded over my mental landscape, coloring everything, making it deeper, solid, real. I had been helpless then, and I was helpless now, and I held back a sob, refusing to cry. The scent of rock rose, strong, ancient air that dinosaurs breathed, finally loosed by a rockslide-once frozen by chance but now free to move again. I felt the immensity of my loneliness, and it hurt.
Open your eyes, little demon, Newt whispered in my thoughts.
I opened my eyes, blinking at the glare.
"Oh my God," I said, my lips drying out in the sun that existed in my thoughts. I was in the desert. Almost high noon. I was wearing dusty sneakers, and a short-sleeved shirt clung to me from a sweat that barely existed before the dry air stripped it from me. Grit ground under my feet as I turned, taking it in, hearing the emptiness, feeling the space. I knew it wasn't real, but it felt real.
I stood on a paved road, my shadow small under me. Behind me was my mother's car. Before me spilled the world, so vast that my eyes defined the edges with their very failure to comprehend. The sun was high, savagely baking the pinks, purples, and oranges out of the rock. The ground fell from my feet like a mountain turned inside out. A wind I knew existed only in my thoughts pushed on me with the affronted force of a god being asked to stop.
And I had made this.
Shocked, I turned to Newt, beside me. She was dressed in tight capri jeans and a brightly colored top. Dark sunglasses hid her eyes, and a ribbon of moisture ran beside her nose. A silk scarf covering her hair made her look like a fifties movie star out on location. I think she had dressed me, because I certainly hadn't.
"Is it real?" I asked. "Is it done?" The sky was so blue. I might never see it again, but I had it here-in my memory.
She smiled, her lips too red and an overabundance of blush on her cheeks. "Let Al in. Only Al. This needs to be remembered. They all need to remember this."
I had no idea what she meant, but I thought of Al.
A quiver went through me and the world seemed to hiccup. In a cascading wash, he spilled into my mind as if he had been there waiting, and when I opened the door, he fell in. He stood beside me in his Mesopotamia robes, his mouth open and his pupils so small his eyes were like pools of blood. Shock poured from him as he saw what I had done-and fear, but if it was because of what I had done or because now he had to peel it out of my brain, I didn't know.
"My God," he whispered, taking it in. "She even has the old ley lines."
"Al?" I warbled, scared, and it was as if he caught my soul as he grabbed my shoulder when my knees gave out. He hoisted me into his arms, trying to see my construct and search my eyes at the same time.
"Take it, Al," Newt said softly. "Before she loses consciousness."
Al took a frightened breath, his eyes fixing on mine. It hurt, almost, and I wanted it out of me.
"Let me in," he said, seeing the pain in me, and I closed my eyes, unable to refuse.
I started to cry as he took my soul and lifted me out of the collective, leaving only the memory of the afternoon at the Petrified Forest. Carefully he peeled back bits and pieces of the construct, freeing little parts I hadn't known were attached to it, the shape of a rock that I'd seen before on the beach, the color that was akin to a sunset when I was ten, the caw of a rook that sent shivers down my spine-I'd heard it before at camp. Al carefully drew the associated memories back, taking my soul from the construct to leave something that could be made real.
Slowly the pain lifted as I was made whole, and still he looked, making sure nothing was left. "I think," Al whispered, "I think I got all of her. I've not done this before. Oh God, I hope I got all of her." I felt him turn. "Newt. The word to fix it-" And then his voice cracked. "Memoranda," he croaked out, and I felt a ping through me as the thought severed completely.
Things that must be remembered, I translated silently, waiting for the rising crest of imbalance, but nothing came.
And then, though my eyes were shut, I knew that every single demon who had been in Dalliance was with us. I hadn't brought them in; Al had moved my memory to them. It was fixed. It was real.
As one, the demons cowered, crying out as the cool night of Mesopotamia vanished and was replaced in a blink with the hot reality of the Arizona desert in June. "My God!" I heard one say, but most were silent with awe.
"Dali!" Al shouted, his thick-fingered hand cupping my head as he held me to him. "Did it take? Did I do it right?"
"We're here, aren't we?" the older demon called back, and I blearily looked, seeing the jukebox standing beside the memory of my mother's blue Buick. The trunk was open, and there was a picnic basket inside. I hadn't thought of the basket. Someone else had. I'd made something that the demons could twist to their own reality. I'd done it.
"A picnic," Newt said, snapping a red-and-white-checkered blanket out right there on the side of the road. "What a splendid idea. Dali, you must remember to give Rachel royalties every time someone uses this, seeing that she's still alive. I'll be watching your books. Us demonesses must stick together."
Demoness. I'd done it. I was a demon. Yay me.
My head fell onto Al's chest, and I whimpered, my hands balled up as I tried to keep my eyes open. At the outskirts of my vision, I could see the demons standing on the edge of the drop-off, throwing rocks to see how far the illusion went. Fists on his hips, Dali stood between me and Newt, gazing at clouds that somehow never seemed to cover the sun. Newt had sat upon the blanket with a bucket of fried chicken and a wineglass.
Al jiggled me up into a more comfortable posture. "She's not well. I'm taking her home. Anyone still think she's not a demon?"
"I'm fine," I slurred, clearly not.
"No!" Ku'Sox shouted, and my pulse hiccupped. "It was Newt! Newt made it!"
My eyes opened, then squinted. "Screw you. I'm a demon. Deal with it." Oh God. I'm a demon.
"Don't be tiresome," Newt said coyly. "I don't remember the sun. Or colors...like this."
She had cried. The tears were gone now, but she had cried when we'd been alone. I think she did remember, and it made her crazy. Was I going to go crazy, too?
"Al?" I warbled, feeling it all come down on me. "I don't feel so good."
Immediately he held me closer, his warmth doing nothing to stop my shaking.
"Take her home," Newt said, having left her blanket to shade me with her own body. "Her construct stretches the entire breadth of the collective. It's only hampered now by the size of Dalliance."
"She filled the entire collective..." Dali breathed.
"The whole thing. You could walk for most of a day and not run into the wall. I'd suggest we make this our new wallpaper, even as bright as it is. At least we could all fit in it."
"Al," I whispered, feeling the world start to spin. Shit, I couldn't go back. This was for real. I was going to spend the rest of my life here. Under the ground. Away from the sun. Every day exactly the same, surrounded by beings who had lived too long, trapped in their own hell. If I turned around fast, would there be barren wall behind me?
I was passing out. I felt it happen as if in slow motion, parts of my brain turning off, the horizon growing dark, and noises becoming dull. There were congratulations to Al even as he struggled to put space enough between us and them to jump out. Ku'Sox raged until someone shoved him in the trunk. The last thing I remembered was someone, Dali, I think, kissing the top of my hand as I slumped in Al's arms.
"Welcome home, Rachel Mariana Morgan," he said, his goat-slitted eyes holding a new, dangerous light. "It's a pleasure to finally meet you."