“Because he’s an elf?” I exclaimed, frustrated.
Al’s expression twisted even more. “Exactly,” he said, the words dripping scorn and hatred. “Love has made you into a tool, Rachel, and like a tool, you are oblivious and will be cast aside when your job is done.”
“I am not,” I whispered, cold, but the thought that Trent would soon remember his place among his people weighed heavily on me. Quen was right. I was a phase, a happy dalliance.
“You are blind, Rachel, even as you are a part of it.” Al pointed at me, his anger stemming from a deep wound. “Elves ask too much. They bring only destruction. That is what they are. They’ve always been such, even when we tried to crush them from existence. And it will kill you.”
“But you loved Ceri,” I pleaded, and Trent grunted as if only now getting it.
Al’s pointing finger slowly dropped, his depth of hatred chilling me.
“Just so,” he said bitterly, looking at his empty room. “You begin to understand?”
“You can’t blame this on Ceri,” I said, a new fear slithering through me. He’d loved her, loved her enough to break the rules and free her from her servitude in such a way that I could save her life. From there the world changed as Trent used her to begin to pull his people back from extinction. Love had turned my goals to his, and I found a pre-curse DNA sample so Ceri’s baby would be free of the curse. And now, bolstered by the mere hint of success, the elves had begun to eliminate everyone more powerful than themselves. Perhaps Al was right.
Horrified, I watched him stuff the last of the things on the mantel into the bag like Santa in reverse. His thick fingers hesitated at Mr. Fish, and then he closed them, leaving the brandy snifter where it was. “Where has everyone gone?” I asked, scared.
Gaze flicking to Trent, then Bis, sitting wide-eyed on Ceri’s chair, he hesitated. “Anywhere they want,” he said, waving at Bis until he moved to Trent’s shoulder.
Anywhere? My thoughts went back to the empty state of Dalliance, and then the celebration of familiars at the mall. He said it had been a cry of joy . . .
“Oh, your elven brethren have made a large mistake,” Al said to Trent as Ceri’s chair was wreathed in a haze of black and shrank down to the size of my hand. “One we will exploit to the fullest and wipe them from existence once and for all,” he said, using both hands to shift the smaller but clearly just as heavy chair into the bag. “Revenge is a tricky beast. Her claws face both ways. I don’t mind a few more scars. They’ll be unnoticed among the rest.”
Trent paled. “The curse that attacked you . . . ,” he whispered, and then he reached for the slate table, his balance gone. “The Goddess help us,” he whispered, expression haunted. “That’s what I felt. It was a call to break the curse.”
“What curse?” I said, feeling as if I was on the brink of a precipice.
Al snapped the bag shut and lifted it easily. “Not break exactly, but when they modified it to force the surface demons to reality, they created a loophole.” He spun to his fire and took the iron, rapping the ash from it. “I’m leaving now. You can have the tapestry. I never liked that thing anyway.”
My heart thudded. “Al, wait!” I called out, but with a tweak on my awareness, he vanished in a curl of black-tainted ever-after.
Bis shifted his wings, and the room abruptly seemed a lot colder. I turned to Trent at his soft scuffing of feet. He had sat down, sinking into Al’s simple three-legged stool, elbow on the table and head in his hand as his thumb ran over a tiny scratch in the surface. I’d seen Al like that more than once. The hatred between the elves and the demons went far deeper than I’d thought. “Trent? What happened?”
He looked up, a hint of the fear of the unknown in the back of his gaze. “It must have taken the dewar working in concert with a good portion of the enclave,” he said, and then his focus sharpened on me. “That’s what you felt in your mom’s spelling room. The unbinding spell recognized you as a demon, and when it couldn’t find the curse keeping you in the ever-after, it just kept trying to take something, anything. The demons figured out what was going on, and now they’re free.”
My lips parted. Free? As in reality?
Suddenly I got it—the entire mess. Landon had made a huge error. He’d freed the surface demons to get rid of the undead, but once they walked into the sun—which I was sure they would—it’d be the demons who’d replace them as the rule makers and breakers, not the elves.
Grimacing, I reached for Mr. Fish. I didn’t think Al was coming back. “We should go,” I said, bending to pick up my bag. There was nothing here. Everything that had meant anything had been taken, held in that little carpetbag.
“Cincinnati?” Bis spread his wings in anticipation. “But you’re supposed to be dead.”
Trent edged from the softly mewling tapestry. “It doesn’t matter now.”
No, it didn’t matter. And I was not going to help Landon save the world. He’d made his choice, and it wasn’t my responsibility.
But as I felt Bis’s aura slip around us, I had a bad feeling I was going to have to anyway.
Chapter 15
The steeple was a dark slash against the underside of the clouds, red with the reflected light of the Hollows. Stray gleams of streetlight eked through the unmoving trees, making lumps and shadows in the graveyard. There was no friendly glow from the back porch. There was no back porch at all, and I held Mr. Fish carefully as my steps through the damp, unmowed grass slowed and the extent of the damage became evident.
Trent steadied me as I stepped over the low stone wall separating the garden from the graveyard. His hand was warm on my elbow, and I leaned into him, trying to tell him with my touch that I didn’t believe what Al had said. He’s not using me, I thought, but the uglier part of me added, This might not have happened if you’d walked away six months ago. I slowed, pulling away from him as the heartache of my church fell on me.
The rank, acidic scent of things that shouldn’t be burned was choking. The kitchen and back living room were gone; only the broken remains of what wouldn’t burn were left to show there’d ever been anything there. What was probably the stove and the fridge poked through what was left of the roof, all of it well below the original floor and filling the crawl space. Gutter work, twisted from the heat, was the most recognizable thing.
The stones of the original church were black and glistening from the soot and heat. Plywood had already been fixed over the open hallway, and it looked oddly high up from the ground without a porch to ground it. It was worse than seeing it on TV—cold, dark, and sad with chunks of our lives out of place and hardly recognizable.
“I’m sorry,” Bis said, and I touched his feet, ignoring the lump in my throat as I pushed forward. My pace faltered when the ground became squishy from the water used to put out the fire. My coffeemaker: gone. The mug with the rainbows on it: gone. My spelling books: gone.
“There’s Jenks,” Trent said in relief, and somehow I smiled at the bright trail of sparkles arrowing down from the belfry.
Bis’s wings shushed against my head, and my smile became real as I continued my list of don’t-haves: no funerals, no songs of blood and daisies, no feeling guilty for surviving because I had fled. “Jenks!” I called as he circled, his wings a slow hum of indecision as he tried to read my mood. “Wow, they made a mess. You okay?”
“Hell yes!” Clearly relieved, he dropped down to Trent’s shoulder since Bis was on mine. “You’re lucky I’m not human size or I’d give you a smack,” he said, and Trent hid a grin. “Where’ve you been? Eww, the ever-after,” the pixy said, answering his own question. “Is that where you ditched the mystics? Your aura looks great. The demons are here. In reality. Why by Tink’s little pink dildo did you let them out?”
“I didn’t,” I said, and Jenks looked at Trent, the shock on his angular features lit from his own dust.
“It was Landon.” Trent grimaced at his shoes, now three inches deep in the mud that had once been my backyard. “He made a mistake.” He took my hand, and I gave it a squeeze. His eyes held a thread of heartache, a need to talk. This wasn’t a mistake. Al was bitter and jealous, unable to look past his own hurt, and Trent loved me. But even I knew I wouldn’t be able to help him reach his goal. His goal of elf supremacy? God, I wasn’t going to do this right now.
Jenks’s wings brightened to a hot silver. “Landon? Figures.”
I shivered when a drop of water from the big tree landed on my back. The bark was singed, and I hoped the fire hadn’t killed the tree outright. “Apparently, if you engineer a curse loophole big enough to allow shambling zombies/surface demons through, real demons can follow.” I picked my way through the mud, both wanting and dreading to see what was left.
Jenks’s wings clattered. “Ah, you have to go in around the front if you want to go in. I wouldn’t. It’s pretty bad. They hosed everything down.”
Nice. How many times is my church going to be trashed this week?
Jenks winced, arms over his chest. “Cleaning crew comes Wednesday. I would’ve had them sooner, but the building inspector has to give it an all clear.”
Again Trent’s hand found mine, his touch easing my clenched jaw when a soft warmth stole into me, sparkling where our fingers twined. “I know it’s uncomfortable with Ellasbeth there, but I could use your help with the girls,” he said, his anger at Ellasbeth making ugly, half-heard shadows in his voice.
“Tink’s panties, yes!” Jenks exclaimed, and Bis shifted his wings, clearly uneasy. “Your house. That’s a great idea. Jumoke and Izzy are already there.”
Jenks wants me to leave? Maybe it was worse inside than I imagined. My gut said Ellasbeth wasn’t doing anything other than trying to roll with the punches, but logic said otherwise. The chance to look her in the eye might tell me more.
“Thanks,” I said as I turned to the stone walk that led to the front. “I’ll take you up on that.” There were huge boot prints in the mud where there’d never been mud before. It made me feel violated in a way the missing kitchen didn’t. “Ivy knows I’m not dead, right?”
Jenks’s wings clattered as he left Trent. “Yep. She’s at her folks with Nina.”
“Everything okay?” I questioned.
“You think I’d be hanging out here waiting for you if she wasn’t?”
True.
“Cormel knows you’re not dead, too,” Jenks added, and I jerked to a stop. Mr. Fish’s water sloshed and Trent almost ran into me, his attention fixed on his phone. “Don’t look at me!” Jenks shouted. “I didn’t tell him! He came over about an hour ago. Told me to tell you not to interfere with the undead souls.”
The unsaid “or else” was obvious. My frown deepened as Trent’s phone went dark and he slid it away. “If you didn’t tell Cormel I was alive, who did?” I muttered.
“Your mom?” Jenks hovered just a little in front of me as I headed for the tall gate, his eyes darting nervously to Trent and back again. “She’s having too much fun arranging your funeral. The news has a wake watch going. Tink’s tampons, she’s a little scary, you know?”
Yeah, that sounded like my mom. Frustrated, I shoved the gate open with my foot. Bis left, making widening circles until he found the steeple. Jenks went with him, the pixy talking so high and fast I couldn’t follow it.
“Landon isn’t going to be happy you’re still alive,” Trent said softly.
“Too bad,” I said, tired, and Mr. Fish shuddered at the bottom of his glass.
“One thing an elf hates more than giving something for nothing is when a plan falls apart—and it’s falling apart. I doubt freeing the real demons from the ever-after was his intention. Cormel saw what we had to do to keep Felix’s soul bound. He knows this spontaneous melding isn’t going to stick.” He hesitated as I dug my car keys out. “Rachel, you’re not a tool.”
I jerked to a stop, shocked at the quick topic shift. Trying to smile, I met his eyes. “I know.” But my heart ached, and seeing it, he pulled me close, careful not to spill Mr. Fish.
His arms were warm, and he smelled of burnt amber. Tears threatened as his hand found the back of my head and he held me close, sighing heavily. “Al is trying to drive us apart,” he whispered, and I nodded, needing this. “He’s jealous that we made a stand and he didn’t.” He leaned back, smiling at the track of a tear on me. “I’m not going to walk away from you. I never wanted to see the elves destroy everyone, just not go extinct.”
“I know,” I said, voice wobbling. The “I’m not going to walk away from you” hit me hard. “But Landon does.”
“What Landon wants doesn’t mean anything. He’s not the Sa’han.”
I was starting to wonder if Trent was either, anymore. Maybe that was why he’d agreed to reopen relations with Ellasbeth. Damn it, he wasn’t using me, but I wasn’t going to come out of this where I wanted to be either. He couldn’t be both.
Jenks rose up from the carport, his dust an impatient red. I swallowed down my heartache, disentangling us and starting back to the front walk. Trent’s hand stole into mine immediately, and my chest hurt. “Thanks for coming back with me,” he said. “I know it’s going to be hard with Ellasbeth there, but I love you, Rachel, not her. This is for the girls, not me.”