Inside me, I felt the satisfaction of a steady progression of fire. I wasn't driven enough to survive this. Maybe after being imprisoned in limbo for a thousand years, but not right now. Either let Al in or the soul won. I had to trust him. "Okay," I breathed, and as Al's eyes widened, I stopped fighting.
The soul screamed in victory, and my body shuddered. And then... I was nowhere. I wasn't in the echoing blackness of the demon collective, and I wasn't in the spinning, humming strength of a ley line. I was... nowhere, and everywhere. Centered for the first time in my life, alone and utterly understanding it all. There was no hurry, no reason, and I hung in a blissful state of no questions. Until one stirred in me. Was this where Kisten had gone?
I wondered suddenly, was Kist here? My dad? Was that his aftershave I smelled?
"Rachel?" someone called, and I gathered myself, trying to focus. "Dad?" I whispered, not believing it.
"Rachel!" The voice became louder, and I felt a sudden pain.
Coughing, I took a huge gasp of air, my hair in my mouth, my face. The world was upside down, but then I realized I was on my hands and knees, taking snatches of air between the dry heaves. The sour taste in my mouth fought with the stink of burnt amber pouring off me. My face hurt with each gut-wrenching clench, and I felt it carefully with shaky fingers. Someone had hit me. But I was here, alone in my body. The perverted soul was gone.
I looked up from Al's floor to see a pair of elegantly embroidered slippers. Sending my gaze higher, I found an androgynous robe with a martial arts look about it, and above that, Newt's mocking expression. The demon was bald again. Even her eyebrows were gone.
Her face wrinkled when she saw me looking at her. "Honestly, Al, you're going to have to do better," she said, her words long and drawn out. "You almost let her kill herself. Again."
Al? That must be whose hand is on my back.
"Rachel?" Al said again, close and intent. I recognized it from that in-between place Td been in. His hand fell away, and I sat back to bring my legs to my chest. Forehead on my knees, I hid from everyone. "What's she doing here?" I muttered, meaning Newt. Cold, I shivered.
"It's her," he said, his relief clear as I heard him stand. "Thank you."
"Don't thank me. This wasn't free." The soft shush of her slippers was loud, but I didn't look. I was alive. I was alone in my mind. Al had been in there. No telling what he'd seen.
"I ought to file charges of uncommon stupidity against you for letting her try this alone," Newt said dryly, and I took a deep breath. Not out of it yet, apparently.
"She wouldn't have been alone if, to begin with, you'd given me a suitable soul," Al said, and I jumped when a blanket smelling of burnt amber fell across my shoulders. "Krathion? Are you insane? He was a lunatic!"
"One man's opinion," Newt said smugly, and I pulled my head up. "And what a typical male response," she added, glancing at me. "Blame everyone but yourself. You left Rachel in the middle of a highly sensitive curse. You could have brought her with you. Brought the bottle with you. But you left her alone. Face it, Al. You don't have the smarts to raise a child."
"You did this on purpose!" Al raged, sounding like a little kid calling foul. Newt looked smug, and Al turned away, frustrated.
Shaking, I tugged the blanket higher. They were my hands. My hands. Tears prickled when I looked at the small bottle on the table, green and swirling again. I wanted to laugh. Cry. Puke. Scream. "What's she doing here?" I asked again, my voice stronger.
"Krathion is insane," Al said. "It took two of us to get him back in the bottle."
I fingered the wool blanket, worried. I had a bad feeling that Newt had tried to kill me. "You were in my mind?" I asked her, fearful now.
Newt made a small sound of regret, stepping silently across the room. "No," she said petulantly as she stopped beside Pierce, slumped beside the empty tapestry. Even the moving figures made of weft and weave were afraid of her and had hidden. Pierce was nursing a swollen lip, and was sullen, even scared maybe. I was surprised to see him here at all.
"Al took teacher's prerogative," she said as she ran her fingers through his hair. Pierce stiffened, the tightening of his lips giving away his anger. "I merely put the soul back in the bottle once Al got it out of you. Gaily, if you can't demonstrate the ability to keep her alive, then I will take over her care and get you a dog instead."
My eyes widened. Fear got me to my feet, and I wobbled until I reached for the table for balance. "It was my fault, not Al's. I'm fine. Really. See? All better."
Al stiffened. "I didn't leave her alone. I left her in the care of my trusted familiar. The curse was invoked by accident. One you probably planned."
Trusted familiar? I looked at Pierce, knowing laughter would sound hysterical.
"Excuses, excuses," Newt drawled, clearly seeing through it. "He tried to save her life. I see it in his thoughts." She shifted a stray hair from Pierce to set it straight. "It was his skill that failed him, not his spirit. He was here. You were not." Smiling, she turned to Al. "Think on that before you kill him."
"Kill him?" Al blurted out. "Why would I kill him?"
Yeah, seeing as he was Al's trusted familiar, but when Newt looked at the to-go cups spilled on the black floor, Al stiffened. His gaze flicked to Pierce, then me, and there it stayed, scaring me. Al thought I had freed him. The coffee had come from somewhere, and I couldn't line jump.
"No more warnings, Al," Newt said, and both Al and I jerked our attention back to her. "Your mistakes are starting to have an impact on all of us. Another error, and I take her."
"You planned this. You gave me a bad soul. That curse couldn't contain Krathion, even if she had done it properly." Al seethed, but not a whisper of power edged his hands, telling me he knew better than to threaten Newt openly.
My skin prickled as the tension rose. Newt was crazy, but Al would lose. I didn't want to belong to her. Al and I had an agreement, but Newt would see only master and slave. "I'm fine. Really!" I insisted, swaying on my feet and feeling my elbow throb. I'd hit something. Hard. Al, maybe? I didn't remember it.
Lips curled up almost in a smile, Newt sniffed as if she smelled something rank. "I don't understand this loyalty. He's wasting your time, Rachel. You'll have precious little of it if you're not careful. You could be so much more, so much faster. Best hurry, before I remember something else and decide you're a threat."
With hardly a breath of air shifting the candle flames, she was gone. Al let out a huge sigh and turned to me. "You stupid bitch."
He moved, and I darted back, slipping on the black floor and going down. His hand swung where I had been, and I skittered back until I hit the hearth.
"You freed him! For a cup of coffee!" Al raged.
"I didn't!" I protested, tensing for the coming smack as he stood over me. Fight back? Yeah, there's a good idea. I'd take my licks. Then I'd take them out on Pierce later.
"Algaliarept!" Pierce shouted, and Al hesitated, the sound of his summoning name being enough to give him pause. But it was the pure ting of metal hitting the marble floor that made me jump, not the back of Al's hand, and I watched the band of charmed silver roll toward us, spinning in ever smaller circles at Al's feet.
"I don't need her to slip your leash, demon spawn," Pierce said darkly, and something in his voice twisted in me. It was threatening, decisive, and utterly unafraid. I went cold at the sight of Pierce, his feet spread wide, a flicker of black vanishing from his spread fingers as he made them into fists. His eyes promised violence.
"I've been free since the moment you caught me," he boasted, making it into a threat. "I'm here to keep her alive among the putrid stink of you all, not wash your dishes and twist your curses. A needed post, if you're passing off soul-stealing curses as an aura supplement."
God help me, I think I'm going to be sick. "I don't need a babysitter," I said.
Pierce looked at me, deadly serious. "I swan you do, Rachel," he said, and my eyes narrowed.
Al harrumphed. His hand, once poised to smack me, had turned and was now offered to help me up instead. "How long have you known he could slip his charmed silver?" he asked.
"Not until he just did it," I said truthfully as he yanked me up. He let me go, and I flicked my eyes to Pierce. "You need to stop underestimating him, Al," I said, not wanting to be caught between them again. "You're right. He's going to get me killed." My gaze went from Al to Pierce. "Through his own arrogance."
Pierce's eyebrows rose as he felt the sting of that, but I wouldn't drop his gaze, still angry. Al, though, couldn't have been happier. "Indeed," he almost growled, clearly hearing more in my words than what I had said. "I think we've made enough progress for today, Rachel. Go home. Get some rest."
My lips parted, and my fingers fell from the blanket over my shoulders. I could not seem to stop shivering. "Now? I just got here. Uh, not that I'm complaining."
Al glanced at Pierce, looking as if he was mentally cracking his knuckles. Pierce was glaring right back, grim faced and determined. Idiot. As soon as I left, they were going to have a "demon to familiar chat." / wasn't going to be the one to clean up after it, though.
"Come along," Al said, taking my elbow and letting go when I hissed in pain.
"You're coming with me?" I questioned, and Al took my other, undamaged arm instead.
"If you're not here when I get back," the demon said to Pierce, "I will kill you. I may not be able to restrain you, but I can find you easily enough.
Yes?"
Pierce nodded, grim new lines showing on his face.
I opened my mouth to protest, but Al had reached out and tapped a line. In an instant, I dissolved to a thought and was pulled into the nearest ley line, ribbons of energy that strung like threads between reality and the ever-after. Instinctively I flung up a protective circle around my thoughts, but Al had beaten me to it.
Al? I questioned, surprised that he was with me since it more than doubled the cost.
I told you to do nothing. I come back and find you possessed? I had to ask Newt for help. Do you know how embarrassing that is? How long it will take me to pay that off?
Our minds were sharing space, and though I couldn't hear anything he didn't wanted me to, he couldn't hide his anger with me and his unexpected worry about Pierce. Al was getting a dose of my anger at the man, too. Maybe that was why Al was taking me home when he could just as easily have dumped me off in the church's graveyard. He wanted a peek at my emotions.
The memory of my lungs was aching, but I felt him twist something sideways, and I stumbled as we popped back into existence, the fog that had been here when I left even thicker now. The glow from the back porch was a hazy blob of yellow, and I pulled the damp, foggy spring night deep into me. Four hours, and I was home.
"Student?" Al questioned, somewhat softer now that he'd seen my anger at Pierce, and I turned to him, thinking he looked like he belonged in the fog, wearing his elegant coat, tidy boots, and smoked glasses. "Do you have any idea the pressure I'm under?" he added. "The accusations you never hear about, the threats? Why do you think I double-checked that bottle Newt gave me? She wants you, Rachel, and you are giving her excuses to take you in any form she can!"
"I lit the candle because I was not going to sit in the dark when your familiar left and the lights went out!" I said, not about to take this meekly. "I didn't mean to drop it. The paper caught fire, and I dumped the water on it to put it out. The soul was freed. The soul, Al, you bastard. You knew I wouldn't do it if it was a soul."
He dipped his head, the fog blurring his features. "That's why I didn't tell you."
"Don't lie to me anymore," I demanded, braver now that I was back in my own reality. "I mean it, Al. If I'm going to go bad, let me make my own grave, okay?"
I had meant it to be sarcastic, but it rang frighteningly true. Frowning, Al began to turn away, hesitated, and then... came back. "Rachel, you don't seem to understand. Newt doesn't care if it's you or someone else who is able to kindle demon magic and begin a new generation of demons. She just wants to control who can. If Krathion had gained your body, she would've taken custody of you to protect the rest of us, because I certainly can't control a lunatic with the ability to invoke demon magic and jump between the ever-after and reality at will." He hesitated, his eyes meeting mine. "She doesn't care about you, Rachel. She only cares about what your body can do, and she wants to control it. Don't let her."
Scared, I tugged the blanket tighter around me, my feet getting damp in the long grass. No wonder the coven of moral and ethical standards had shunned me and Trent had bashed my head into a tombstone. I wasn't being smart about this. A simple curse like possession could negate me completely - give someone with less moral standing everything I had the potential for. And I had been ignoring that.
I exhaled, finally getting it. Standing there in my familiar graveyard, I felt a new chill of mistrust seep into me. Son-of-a-bitch demons.
Seeing it, Al grunted, seeming pleased. "Until next week," he said, turning away.
"Al?" I called out after him, but he didn't stop. "Thank you," I blurted out, and he halted, his back to me. "For getting that thing out of me. And I'm sorry." My thoughts went to Pierce and I grimaced. "I'll be more careful."
The door to the church squeaked open, and the sound of shrill pixy children carried out into the damp air. Al turned, his gaze going past me to Ivy's black silhouette waiting in the threshold. I'd said thank you. And apologized. It was more than I thought I'd ever do. "You're welcome," he said, his expression lost in the shadows. "I'll see what I can do about the no lying... thing." And inclining his head, he vanished.