“No!” Dali exclaimed. “By the two worlds colliding, if I could go back in time, I’d kill her the first time she set foot in my office!”
Al rubbed his forehead before picking up two shot glasses full of an amber something he’d just poured from Trent’s bar. “I know the feeling,” he said, setting one of them on Trent’s desk and giving it a clink before sipping his.
“Then you’d both be dead three times over already,” Newt said brightly. “You, Dali, are not yet ready to slip from this life, and for all your pissing and moaning, neither are you, Gally. Not like this—whimpering and sniveling, taken out by an elf’s plotting. Rachel can do elven magic. I don’t care if you don’t like it. So can you, so can you all, if you would take that holier-than-thou noose off your necks!”
“Ah, Newt?” I hazarded, but Dali had stood, his face red and frustrated as the already insecure demon came to grips with the fact that he was helpless before a world that wanted to see him dead.
“No more!” the demon bellowed, and Newt stood, robe unfurling.
“You will!” Newt shouted back, and I pressed deeper into the couch. “I have watched your cowardice and unfounded prejudice stain our existence long enough! We share a source of magic with the elves. No wonder they best us time and again when we ignore the source of our strength and take it in the dribs and drabs that exist in tiny pockets.”
“Enough!” Dali shouted, and Newt strode forward to put her face inches from his.
“You will listen!” she exclaimed, her black eyes flashing and a haze of blue rimming her hands.
Dali’s eyes flicked to them and she abruptly backed off, shoulders hunched and eyes down. Al cleared his throat. “This just got a lot more interesting,” he said, and Dali’s confidence came rushing back. “Newt, where are you getting your magic, love?”
Newt grimaced. I gave Trent a shrug, breathing easier when Dali finally found someone else to be mad at.
“Rachel isn’t the only one dabbling in elf magic, eh?” Dali said, clearly disgusted as he pushed back from the desk and stood.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Newt hid her hands in her sleeves. I suddenly felt like two kids having been caught setting off stink spells in the girls’ bathroom. Not that I had experience there—much.
Brow furrowed, Dali took a sip of his drink, not as irate as I would’ve expected. But then Newt was known to be crazy. “You knew about this?” Dali asked Al.
Al shrugged. “I didn’t believe her. How could a demon hide that she and the Goddess—”
Newt’s head came up. “I won’t sit and do nothing as Rachel goes insane trying to hide what she is, what we all are. The Goddess will speak to us, answer us as well.”
“And leave us to die,” Dali said bitterly. “To fight and scratch out an existence when she turns her back on us? No. Never again. She has her favorites and I’ll not be played for a fool once more.”
It was starting to come together, this bitter rivalry between the elves and the demons, and I watched, silent, when Newt, her robes rustling faintly, crossed to where Dali now sat against Trent’s desk, his head bowed as harsh thoughts spun through him.
“You don’t have to,” Newt said softly as she touched his arm.
A haze shifted between them, and Dali looked at his hands, feeling the energy she had given him, filling his chi with a portion of her own. His breath caught as he accepted that there was a way out of this—if he could let go of a lifetime of hatred. “How long have you hidden this?”
Newt turned away. “I don’t remember. So long that the Goddess’s mystics don’t look to find me anymore.”
Her expression was pained, and I started when Trent’s hand landed on my shoulder in support. I knew how she felt, and I imagined that the hurt of losing the exaltation the mystics imparted never dulled with time but only intensified.
Dali looked tired as he shifted his attention to me, eyes flicking listlessly to Trent standing protectively beside me. “You taught her how to hide them as well?” he asked Newt.
“I changed her aura so they can’t easily find her, but Rachel has a newer bond, one they haven’t forgotten yet.” She hesitated. “They’re still looking for her, knowing that the Goddess must become again. Her eyes have seen reality through Rachel, and the need to partake in it has left the rest predisposed to becoming anew.”
Becoming. The Goddess had said that as well, but she’d feared it, as it would destroy her.
“Dali, we can reopen the lines before sunrise with elven magic.”
Trent’s hands on my shoulder tightened. “I’ll rally the dewar and the enclave.”
“No.”
Dali’s word was soft. He never looked up, his mien holding regret as he stood against another man’s desk, in another man’s house, in a world that didn’t want them while the prison they’d desperately tried to escape stood poised to crumble and destroy the very world they wanted to live in but were afraid to.
“You’d have us live like this?” Newt said bitterly, pulling at her clothes as if the tattered and stained remnants were their pride and power. “We can reopen the lines, but it must be done before sunrise. I’ve been talking with the Goddess—”
“What!” Dali’s head snapped up. In the corner, Al clinked several glasses together, and my mouth became dry at the sound of water being poured into them.
Undeterred, Newt lifted her chin. “She’s actively looking for Rachel, but she knows that if the lines stay shut, she’ll have reduced sight. She’s already starving. The only access she has to reality is through failing pixies and Weres who don’t even know she exists. She’s not listening to the elves anymore thanks to Landon tricking her into destroying the lines.”
Interesting, I thought, wondering if this was why elven magic had failed. A tiny wisp of possibility took hold, pulling me straighter in my seat. I could do this, maybe. I had wrestled control of the mystics’ individual power from the Goddess’s will before. Several times before.
And every time, I ended up fighting to disentangle myself from her so my thoughts wouldn’t kill her, change her beyond recognition, make her . . . become something new.
“I cannot live by reality’s rules without magic to make it tolerable,” Al said. “Dali, we have a chance to not only survive, but in the doing, the world will thank us. Perhaps give us a place again.”
“Give us a place?” Dali thundered. “We are demons! We don’t take charity, we take what we want!”
“Well, what I want is to belong!” Al suddenly yelled. “I want to try it this way for a while. What the hell, Dali. If you don’t like it, you can go back to bartering souls to fill your waitstaff, but I think we can do well here with other people’s rules.” He hesitated, eyebrows rising wickedly. “Finding our ways around them. Making them squirm within their own . . . laws.”
Newt’s face was flushed. “But first we need to reopen the lines.”
I held my breath, waiting. There was more being decided here than if we should try to save the ever-after.
“We lack the strength,” Dali said.
“Then we join our strength with the elves.” Newt put her hands on the desk and leaned toward him.
Dali’s disgusted gaze flicked to hers from under a lowered brow. “No,” he growled.
Trent stepped from me, his breath held and color high. His eyes were bright, and he looked like a leader of people even torn and bandaged as he was—maybe because of it. “Why are we even considering not doing this? The dewar is disillusioned with Landon. They’ll listen to me. Let’s reopen the lines and be done with it!”
“Because she lies, elf!” Dali pushed Newt back off the desk with his voice alone. “The Goddess lies! She tricks! She will kill Rachel outright before allowing the lines to be reopened, and then doom the rest of us to a slow, ignoble death to give herself something to play with for another thousand years. The Goddess will not grant power to us to do this even if it expands her reach. She’ll kill us, then do as she will!”
“But we don’t have to rely on the Goddess’s will,” I protested, feeling left out as I leaned forward on the couch. “I can simply take the power we need from her and be done with it! I just need someone to weave the curse and give it direction.” And maybe save my ass afterward.
Dali seemed to freeze, only his eyes moving as he looked at Al first, then Newt. Both of them seemed to center in on themselves, avoiding him as he slowly gathered his presence. A chill slipped down my spine, but I’d only said the truth.
“The way is that firm already, then?” Dali said, bewildering me even more.
Al’s head bowed, ignoring the question. He looked ill, but Newt’s chin lifted as if taking on a burden.
“Rachel almost caused a new becoming on the Goddess twice now and still managed to extricate herself, saving both their lives. The Goddess will strike her dead on sight, but there will be a span where Rachel is unrecognized, and in the battle for supremacy, Rachel could spin enough magic from her to reopen the lines if we were there to take advantage of it.”
It was what I already knew, but hearing Newt say it made it sound risky.
Dali’s expression was wary. “It would leave her vulnerable to the Goddess’s wrath.”
As if he cared. He was calm, scaring me more than if he had been shouting. “I can handle it,” I said, shaking inside.
“I’ll be there with her,” Newt said, making me feel worse.
“And me,” Trent offered, and I took his hand as he extended it. Seeing us thus, Dali’s expression twisted and he looked away.
Al remained pointedly silent, clearly unhappy. His silence was noted by Dali. Hell, it was noticed by everyone, and he set his glass of ice and liquor down with a sharp snap.
“You both together,” Dali said, lip curling. “With her. Trying to take over the Goddess.”
“It’s what we have,” Trent said loudly.
My heart thudded as I saw the possible end of my days laid before me. “I can’t sit and do nothing if there’s a chance. If this works, magic will be restored, the undead will still have their souls in a parking orbit until they fully die, and the thousands of familiars you’ve got tucked away in the ever-after will still be alive. I’m going to want them to be freed, though.”
Dali sniffed. “Of course you do,” he muttered.
“Even if the lines hold for only a short time, we can get the familiars out,” Newt said. “They will undoubtedly be gathering in the largest space and be easy to move.”
But I didn’t want a rescue. I wanted a resolution.
“This is a bad idea,” Dali said, unconvinced.
“But it is an idea,” I said. “Bad or not, we have to try. If I can steal the energy, will you spin the curse? All of you? I can’t do it.”
I held my breath as Dali sighed, eyes averted as he balanced what was at stake and what it might cost. Pride was his fulcrum, unfairly shifting the weight so that one side had greater force than the other to make a wrong decision more than possible, but likely. We were going to doom the world to another wave of needless violence because of pride, I thought, already trying to find a way to make this work without the demons’ help. Perhaps the dewar would be enough.
But Dali stood, looking down at himself, stuck in the form he was in when the lines closed. “No one likes this helpless muck we wallow in. I’ll ask them. They will decide.”
My heart leapt, and Trent’s fingers tightened on my shoulder.
“Excuse me,” Newt said as she beamed, reaching for Al gracefully. “There might be some dissent that needs to be addressed. Al, will you accompany me?”
Silent, Al picked up his bottle. Not looking at me, he stomped past, his shiny cop shoes catching the light and his pace holding an amazing amount of determination and bad attitude. He yanked the door open, his steps audible on the carpet as he went to the great room.
“Dali?” Newt asked smoothly, her hand now extended to the more powerful, slightly overweight demon.
“This isn’t going to be easy,” Dali grumbled as they left together.
“Nonsense.” Newt looked over her shoulder at me and winked. “You got them to let her into the collective as a student. You even got them to stand up to Ku’Sox when she and Al and that elf of theirs stood up to him. And they didn’t kill Trent because of you,” Newt was saying as the door eased shut. “Getting them to practice elven magic will be nothing,” came through, muted, and then Dali’s bitter laugh.
My skin tingled where Trent’s hand traced across it as he moved to the wet bar. “Trent?”
He was silent as the enormity of what we were going to try to do fell on us. Still not saying anything, he brought me a glass of water. “Here,” he said as the cool glass filled my hand. “You need to keep your fluids up.”
“Trent . . .”
“Drink it,” he said, and I obediently took a sip, the room-temperature water bland as it slipped into me. Sighing, he sat down beside me, his brow furrowed and his gaze hard on nothing. “I want to say that it’s going to be okay,” he finally said.
“But you don’t know.” Ribs ached as I leaned to set the water on the floor. “Trent, the Goddess is looking for me. She’s better equipped for a mental battle and she knows how to fight me off. I don’t want to kill her, which means I’ll have seconds to wrestle control away, and then I’ll be fighting to get free before I infect her too deeply for her to shake it off. And then what? I’ll be hiding from her the rest of my life.”