The heat from Al’s smaller hearth fire was warm on my shins, and I soaked it in, worried about the beta resting on the bottom of the oversize brandy snifter, gills sedately moving. The wood fire crackled, and I breathed the fragrant smoke, much better than the peat moss fire that stank of burnt amber that he’d had last time.
I dropped the fish food into the bowl and turned, glad to see other hints that Al was pulling himself, and therefore me, out of ever-after poverty. I’d seen other demons’ spelling rooms over the last year or so, and they varied greatly as to the theme. Newt’s looked like my kitchen, which made me all warm and cozy. But Al was a traditionalist, and it showed in the stone floors, the glass-fronted ceiling-tall cabinets holding ley line paraphernalia and books, and the smoky rafters coming to a point over the central, seldom-lit raised hearth fire in the middle of the circular room. We didn’t need the big fire for the spell we were working, and Al sat on the uncomfortable stool at his slate-topped table five feet from the smaller hearth. He liked the heat as much as I did.
The shelves were again full, and the ugly tapestry I’d once heard scream in pain was back on the wall. The hole that he’d hammered between my room and the spelling kitchen had been tidied, and the new solid stone door between the two met with an almost seamless invisibility.
“Mr. Fish is acting funny,” I said as I watched the fish ignore the pellets.
Al glanced from the book he was holding at arm’s length. “Nothing is wrong with your fish,” the demon said, squinting at the print as if he needed the blue-tinted round glasses. “You’re going to kill him if you give him too much food.”
But he wasn’t eating, simply sitting on the bottom and moving his gills. His color looked okay, but his eyes were kind of buggy. Distrusting this, I slowly turned to Al.
Feeling my attention on him, he frowned as he ran an ungloved finger under the print to make it glow. His usual crushed green velvet coat lay carefully draped over the bench surrounding the central hearth, and his lace shirt was undone an unusual button to allow for the warmth of the place. His trousers were tucked into his boots, and to be honest, he looked a little steampunky. Feeling my attention on him, he grimaced. It was one of his tells, and my eyes narrowed. Either it was the fish or the charm I wanted to know how to do.
“He’s just sitting on the bottom,” I said, digging for the source of his mood. “Maybe I should take him home. I think it’s wearing on him.”
Al peered sourly over his book at me. “He’s a fish. What would wear upon a fish?”
“No sun.”
“I know the feeling,” he murmured, apparently not caring as he went back to the book.
“His mouth is funny,” I prompted. “And his gimpy fin is the wrong color.”
Al’s breath came out in a growl. “There’s nothing wrong with that fish. Teaching you how to identify the maker of a spell by his or her aura is a bloody hell waste of time. As you have an interest, I will indulge you, but I’m not going to do it myself. If you’re done playing zookeeper, we can begin.” He looked pointedly at me. “Are you done, Rachel?”
Silent, I took the mangled ball out of the brown lunch bag I’d brought it in and nervously set it on the table beside the magnetic chalk, a vial of yellow oil, and a copper crucible.
Al’s eyebrows rose. “Since when do you golf?”
I knew Al didn’t like Trent. I knew that the source of his hatred was more than five thousand years old and hadn’t lessened in all that time. “I was on a job,” I said. “It exploded under a deflection charm. I think it might have triggered an assassination spell.”
Shoulders stiff, his eyes narrowed. “You were Kalamack’s caddie?”
“I’m his security,” I said, voice rising. “It’s a paying job.”
Standing, Al’s lips curled in disgust. “I said avoid him, and you take a subservient role?” My breath to protest huffed out when he slammed the book in his hand onto the table. “There’s only one possible relationship, that of a slave and master, and you are failing!”
“God, Al! It was five thousand years ago!” I exclaimed, startled.
“It was yesterday,” he said, hand shaking as it pinned the book to the table. “Do you think the fact that there can be no viable children between elf and demon is an accident? It’s a reminder, Rachel. Lose him or abuse him. There is no middle ground.”
“Yeah?” I exclaimed. “You’re the one who offered him a circumcision curse. I thought you two were BFFs.”
Brow furrowed, Al came around the table, and I forced myself to not move. “You’re making a mistake. There’re already concerns that we moved too fast in killing Ku’Sox.”
I drew back. “Excuse me!”
“That we were taken in by elven trickery and lured into killing one of our own.”
“That is so full of bull!” I could not believe this. “Ku’Sox was trying to kill all of you and destroy the ever-after!”
“Even so,” he said as he put a threatening arm over my shoulder. “It would be better if you simply . . .” His words drifted off into nothing, his fingers rubbing together, then opening as if freeing something.
“You spent a thousand years with Ceri. What’s the difference?”
His arm fell away, and I felt cold. “Ceri was my slave. You’re treating Trent as an equal.”
“He is an equal.”
Motions brusque, Al reached for his book. “No, he isn’t,” he growled.
“Yeah? Well, you loved Ceri,” I accused. “You loved her for a thousand years.”
“I. Did. Not!” he thundered, and I cringed when dust sifted from the rafters.
“Fine,” I muttered. “You didn’t.” This had been a bad idea, and I grabbed my golf ball to go home. He was my easy ticket out of here, though, until the sun set and Bis woke up.
Seeing me standing there, chin high and pissed, clearly wanting to leave, Al relented, stiffly pointing for me to take his chair. Relieved and uncomfortable, I did, setting the golf ball back down with undue force before I sat on the hard stool. The spell book was splayed out in his thick, ruddy hand as he came to stand behind me, and I could smell the centuries of ever-after on him, soaked in until it couldn’t be washed off. He’d teach me this, but I was sure our conversation was far from over.
“It doesn’t look like much,” I said as I looked at the spell laid out before us.
His hand hit the table beside me, and he leaned uncomfortably close over my shoulder. “Good curses don’t.”
The slate table shifted as he pushed back up, and still lurking more behind than beside me, he peered at the book over his glasses. “Step one,” he said loudly. “Sketching the pentagram. You can do that, yes?”
I blew across the table and picked up the magnetic chalk. “You need a book for this?”
“No.” He pointedly dropped a colorful square of silk, and I wiped the slate free of stray ions. “I’ve not done it the long way for ages. Any more questions? Then a standard pentagram of comfortable size. The point goes up if the ley lines are flowing into your reality, but down if they are flowing out.” He hesitated, then said sarcastically, “Which way are they flowing, Rachel?”
Hesitating, I tried to guess. We were about four stories deep. “Has the sun set yet?”
He cleared his throat in disapproval, and when I turned, he said, “No.”
“Then it’s point up,” I said, mostly to myself as I began to sketch. I’d only recently found out that the ley lines, the source for most if not all magic, flowed like tides between reality and the ever-after. Energy streamed into reality at night, and flowed out when the sun was up, but since there were lines scattered over the entire globe, it evened out unless a line was unbalanced. And if it was, it wreaked havoc.
I don’t know which is worse, I thought, the soft sounds of the sliding chalk mixing with the snapping fire making a singularly comforting sound. An attack on Trent, or that my line might be wonky. The misfires were coming from Loveland. Damn it, it was my line. I knew it.
“Better” was Al’s grudging opinion as I finished, but I could tell he was pleased. I’d been practicing. “Crucible in the center, ball in the crucible. As you say, simple stuff.” The snap of the book make me jump, and he added, “Step two. Burn the object to ash. Use a spell to avoid contamination.”
The crucible was cold against my fingers as I placed it in the cave of the pentagram, and I tried to fold the ball so it would all fit in the copper bowl. We needed the ash, apparently. “Do I need a protection circle?” I asked, and then remembering having burned my fingers this morning, I wedged a tiny portion of the ball off to use as a connecting bridge.
Al leaned over my shoulder, his lips so close to my ear that I could feel their warmth. “Do you make a pentagram for any other reason?”
I turned to face him, not backing down. “I do, yes.” Maybe bringing Ceri up had been a bad idea, and I looked across the table to the cushy chair that had been hers, still there although the woman was not.
Grumbling, he waved his hand in acquiescence, and using the outer circle linking the points of the pentagram as the circle base, I touched the nearest ley line and set a protection circle. Energy seeped in, connecting me to all things, and I let it flow unimpeded as a reflection of my aura stained the usual red smear of ever-after now making a sphere half on top, half underneath the table. I scooted the stool back a smidge so my knees wouldn’t hit it under the table and accidentally break the spell. As I watched my thin layer of smut skate and shiver over the skin of the molecule-thin barrier, I tasted the energy for any sign of bitterness or harsh discord. It was fine. The lines were fine.
But the fear of being trapped in that inertia dampening charm gave me pause. My nudge to Limbcus’s golf ball had blown it up, and I was gun-shy.
“We’re waiting . . .” Al drawled.
Well, it was in a protection circle, I thought, and maintaining my grip on the line, I held the small bit of the ball I’d peeled off in my hand as I carefully enounced, “Celero inanio.”
A puff of black smoke enveloped the ball, and for a moment, the reek of burning rubber outdid the stink of burnt amber. The heavy smoke rolled upward, curling back as it hit the inside of my small circle until it finally cleared.
In the center of the pentagram and the crucible was a pile of ash. For an instant, relief filled me. My control was fine. And then my mood crashed. Something from Loveland had caused the misfires. If it wasn’t me, what was it?
“Very good.” Book in hand, Al sat down before me in my usual chair, and I wondered if he’d been hiding behind me this entire time to avoid a possible burn if I did it wrong.
Peeved, I eyed him, the length of the table between us. “You’re such a chicken squirt.”
One eyebrow went up, and he pushed the oil across the table at me. “Anoint the ash with oil of marigold,” he said dryly. “Don’t ask me why, but it has to be marigold. Something to do with the linkages in the DNA allowing a hotter burn.”
Unsure, I picked the oil up. “How much?”
Al opened the book back up and peered at it over his blue-tinted glasses. “Doesn’t say, love. I’d use an amount equal to the mass of the ash.”
My palm itched as I broke the protection circle, carefully spilling what I thought was the right amount of oil onto the ash. This was kind of loosey-goosey for me, but demon magic had more latitude than the earth witch magic I was classically trained for, being a mix of earth and ley line and whatever else they cobbled together.
“Burn it using the same charm you use for making a light,” he said, and I touched the oil/ash mixture to make a connection to the slurry so the next curse would act on it and not, say, my hair. But when I reset my circle, he reached out and broke it, shocking me with the reminder that he was still stronger than me—unless I worked really hard at it.
“No protection circle,” he said, and I slumped.
“Why not? Something is causing misfires, and I don’t want to blow you up. I mean, you just got your kitchen looking halfway decent again.”
Al’s grimace as he looked over the space was telling. “Your magic is fine,” he said, but he was edging backward. “You can’t put it in a circle. If you do, then the color of the flame will be distorted from your aura.”
My fingers twitched. That was how it worked, eh?
“But I don’t think it matters,” Al said with a false lightness. “That ball was not charmed by anyone but you.”
Which would mean the misfires were responsible for it. Taking a steadying breath, I renewed my hold on the ley line. “In fidem recipere,” I said, smearing the ash and oil between my fingers for a good connection. One eye squinched shut, I finished the curse and made the proper hand gesture. “Leno cinis.”
The ley line surged through me as the oil and ash burst into flame, and I wiggled at the uncomfortable sensation. Almost two feet tall, the flame burned with an almost normal gold color, hinting at red at the edges, and black at the core. I cut back on the energy flow, and when the flame subsided to three inches, both Al and I leaned over the table to get a closer look.
There was the bare hint of a mossy scent coming from Al, so faint I thought I might have imagined it. I must have done something, because his gaze slid to mine, making me shiver at his eyes, again back to their normal goat-slitted redness thanks to a costly spell. “That’s your aura,” he said flatly, and I began breathing again. “Your aura alone, and very little of it,” he added. “You hardly tapped it, indeed. You say it made a crater?”