Ever After (The Hollows 11)

Chapter Seven

The scent of burnt amber pulled through my awareness first, dragging the rest of the ever-after behind it. I left the ley line gratefully, the harsh taste/sound of it making me shudder. Ku'Sox hadn't summoned me, or I'd be fighting for my life by now, and I sighed in relief as I decided that I was in the ever-after, blue sky, white sun, and salty-tasting wind notwithstanding. Nowhere in reality stank so bad. My nose had adjusted to the smell even before I finished coalescing to find myself standing on a round dais of white rock, two toga-clad demons before me like judges, a crowd of them behind me muttering like the mob they were.

I shivered, trying to throw off the wrong feeling of the line. I seemed to be in a Greek auditorium with rising benches of stone and stately pillars with white cloth strung between them to shade the demons from the fake sun. The horizon was lost in a stark white line, and I looked for the jukebox when I realized I was in Dalliance. It might look as if we were outside, but we were deep underground in the ever-after. The restaurant was a convenient meeting place, and I wondered why the demons were adhering to the dress rules since it was clearly not being used as an eatery, but rather . . . a courtroom? Irate demons filtered in, their varied clothing shifting to togas as they passed the threshold.

Al was beside me on the dais, and finding the collected, slightly bitter demon there was a relief. He was in a toga as well instead of his usual crushed green velvet frock coat, the fine cloth tied with a crimson sash so bright that it made me squint. His hair was in oiled ringlets, making his somewhat blocky face look even more so. Sandals peeped from under his hem, and I stared at his black toenails. That was new.

His manner was off as well, his red, goat-slitted eyes holding a sheen of nervousness as he gave me a quick once-over and frowned. This didn't bode well. He was always confident, even when he shouldn't be, and I followed his gaze to the long bench before us just on the other side of the shallow moat, making a pained smile at Newt and Dali. Not my favorite denizens of the ever-after.

"So you always talk to Dali in front of an audience?" I quipped, and Al grimaced.

"Stand up. Fix your hair," Al said as he smacked me into a stiffer position, keeping to his usual British nobleman accent though he now looked like a Greek councilman. "My God, what is that you're wearing? Jeans? You smell like horse."

"That's because I was on one," I said, becoming angry. "Someone from the ever-after stole Ceri and Trent's daughter. Three guesses as to who. And why."

My tone was sarcastic, but Al made a noise as if he didn't care, and I shivered as a cascade of ever-after fell over me, tainted with his aura. For a moment, the rising noise of the demons behind me muted, and then it returned as his aura fell away and I found myself in sandals and a homespun robe with purple silk lining. The moist wind tugged unfamiliarly at my hair, and I reached up to find a ring of wilting flowers. The entire outfit smacked of something that Ceri, Al's ex-familiar, might have looked good in. Me, not so much.

"There. Now you fit in." Al stiffened as he returned his attention to the two demons reclining on a long bench before us. There was an ominous wide ring of sunken ground between us like a barrier.

"You promised you'd never summon me," I said, nervous as Newt gave me a bright, evil-looking smile and toasted me with something red in a wineglass that didn't fit the time period. "We had a deal. I don't yank you across the lines, and you don't yank me." I tried not to complain, but I was still shaking off the adrenaline, and it was my God-given right to be bitchy. "I was trying to get to my scrying mirror, but I was across Cincy at Trent's." I hesitated. "Sorry," I added. "I really was trying."

Al didn't meet my eyes, instead gazing forward into nothing as he squared his shoulders. "They asked me to summon you, and since you failed to contact me, I complied."

They? He meant Newt and Dali, and I shifted uneasily, my sandals scraping. Better and better. Al took pride in refusing to work in the system-compliance meant we were up shit creek. Again. Nervous, I followed his gaze to the dais and tried to smile at the big bad demons smiling back at me.

Newt was the only other female demon in existence, possibly driven nuts because the elves killed her "sisters," but more likely because Ku'Sox had tricked her into killing the ones they'd missed. Slim and gender neutral, she was sporting a bald head again. Heavy black eyeliner edging her eyes was the only feminine touch beyond the spare curves showing past her toga. Her entirely black eyes traveled over me, and a turbanlike hat misted into existence atop her head, sliding her from androgynous to feminine. The demon had trouble remembering what she was doing, but she was powerful, sort of the crazy Wendy of the lost lord-of-the-flies boys. She seemed to do better when I was around, which made everyone nervous.

A good six feet away from her on the same bench, Dali reclined in apparent idleness. He was squinting at me in irritation, his decidedly round form half a civil servant, half a hanging judge. His toga didn't do a thing for him.

I glanced at the demons behind us, assembled either to watch or take part. I didn't know which, and the distinction seemed important. Some of the faces were familiar, demons who'd asked me to make everything from backyard pools to cars to chandeliers for them. I stiffened as I spotted Ku'Sox weaving his way to the front, earning disdainful looks from those he passed.

He has Ceri and Lucy, I thought, my hands becoming fists as I fought the urge to launch myself at him. I'd saved the tall, psychotic demon's life in the effort to save my own, and I trusted him about as far as I could throw a mountain. The admittedly attractive demon was the engineered child of the demons around me, created with both science and magic in an attempt to circumvent the elf curse that kept them tied to the ever-after and basically sterile. Except now he was chained here even more than they were-since I'd cursed him to be fixed to the ever-after day or night.

The more I got to know him and his kin, the more I wondered if most of the ugliness attributed to demonkind over the centuries could be lain at his feet. The wacko habitually ate people alive, believing that by doing so, he would absorb their souls; apparently he harbored doubts he had one. Even better, the demons had designed him with the ability to manipulate as much ley line energy as a female demon. That hadn't turned out very well, seeing as that was probably why Ku'Sox had tricked Newt into killing everyone who might have a hope of controlling him.

And now he was using Nick to drop into reality whenever he felt like it. It had to have been Ku'Sox who took Ceri and Lucy. He had enough reason. It was obvious, and I snarled at the demon working his way to the bottom of the arena.

Al was trying to turn me back around, and I tugged out of his grasp. "I know what you're doing, Ku'Sox!" I shouted as my face warmed, and several nearby demons elbowed each other to get their neighbors to shut up, hoping for some gossip.

The slightly gaunt, youngish demon in gray smiled at me, his charisma falling flat. "I doubt that," he said, his smooth, melodious voice not at all like Trent's. "You're not nearly scared enough," he added, shoving several demons out of his way with his foot so he could take a front seat.

"If you hurt one hair on Lucy's head, I'll throw you back into the ley lines from where I pulled your sorry ass!" I shouted, and Al tugged at me to be quiet. "You think I cursed you now, wait until I put your ugly face in a jar!"

Al smacked my gut, and gagging, I turned back around. "Al," I hissed as the arena began to quiet. "Ku'Sox is up to something."

"Ku'Sox is always up to something," Al muttered.

"He stole Ceri and Lucy!" Oh God. That murdering bastard had Lucy. Ceri could probably take care of herself, but if he hurt one chubby finger on the girl, I would tear both realities apart to make him pay.

Al sniffed as if he didn't care. "How? As you say, you cursed him to the ever-after, and even if he found a way past that, why would he?"

"Because he can't snag Trent, and if he has Ceri and Lucy, Ku'Sox has Trent's nuts in a vise."

"So-o-o-o?" he drawled, gazing up to the sky that had never seen a contrail.

"My God, Al, are you being intentionally blind? I told you Nick was stealing surviving Rosewood babies. Trent can make the cure permanent. If he gives it to Ku'Sox, he won't need you anymore. Any of you!"

Al's expression suddenly became worried. "You have more important things to think about than what Ku'Sox is going to do over the next hundred years," he said, a thick, heavy hand falling on my shoulder and turning me around. "We're on trial."

"Again?" I asked, shaking as I leaned past Al to eye Ku'Sox. "What, are we broke?"

"No." Al's voice was sour. "It's your damned ley line. It went wonky. Leaking like the bloody Titanic."

Remembering the increasingly caustic sound of the lines, I turned to face him fully. My line? Had it really gone that badly unbalanced?

Al's eye twitched. A spot of ice slid down my spine, making me stiffen. We'd been trying for weeks to get the line I'd scraped between reality and the ever-after to close or at least balance, but until I knew how to jump the lines by myself, it wasn't happening. The imbalance was slowly siphoning off the ever-after into reality, and the only reason that no one had said anything before was because it was only a trickle-plenty of time to fix it. That, and because I was the only female demon they might get some baby demons out of after they tired of the trinkets I could solidify into reality for them. They'd been losing maybe a cubic foot of their dimension a year, not much at all. "How bad is it?" I whispered, trying to smile as I looked at Dali, Al's parole officer.

"Bad." Al's voice was faint but resolute. "Stand up. Try to look sexy."

"In a bedsheet?" I complained, running my hands down it. "How can I look sexy in a bedsheet?" He cleared his throat, and I grimaced. "Never mind."

Frowning, I leaned past Al to glare at Ku'Sox again, certain that he was the reason my line had gone wonky. The demon's smile confirmed it, and suddenly I realized just how deep in the crapper we were. Ku'Sox had thriving Rosewood babies. He had the leverage to make Trent give him the permanent cure. He had a line-my line-leaking ever-after enough to be a real problem. He was going to kill the ever-after and blame me for it.

"Oh shit," I whispered, and Ku'Sox inclined his head as he realized I'd figured it out. I took a breath to shout out the truth, hesitating only because Ku'Sox seemed to want me to. There was more to this; I could see it in his face, feel it in the air, moist and heavy.

Frantic, I turned back to Al. "Al," I hissed. "Tell them he broke my line!"

"Right . . ." Al muttered. "We don't know that, and saying so will only get us in jail where you can't do anything."

"But he did it!" Crap on toast, this had gone from bad to worse, and Al didn't care.

"Don't say anything to get me in jail, love," Al breathed, hardly audible over the noise. "You don't have enough to get both of us out. We'll find out how bad the damage is and fix it."

I wasn't sure if Al meant damage to my line or damage to my credibility. Frustrated, I cocked my hip and fumed.

Dali, who'd been counting heads by the look of it, stood up, his hands raised to quiet the rabble behind us. "Quiet! Quiet!" he shouted, his resonant voice booming. The demon was used to being listened to, and the last of the demons hustled to find their places. Every demon was equal in the ever-after, but some had more power than others, and some had more money. Dali had both.

Beside me, Al jammed a finger into my ribs to make me jerk straight. "I'll do the talking," he said.

"If you can't shut your mouths and your minds in that order, I'm going to clear the room!" Dali bellowed. "None of you will have a chance to vent!"

Newt sniffed, curving her legs up beside her on the bench to look oddly sexy. "And by the Turn, you need to vent," she said, her soft voice carrying to the back of the stands. "It smells like goats in a locker room."

There was a smattering of masculine guffaws, and finally they all shut up. It was like living with perpetual sixth graders. Dali lowered his hands, moving his middle-aged spread gracefully as he walked to the center of the narrow stage. Demons could appear as whatever they wanted. I still didn't know what Dali found appealing in being a fortysomething, slightly overweight, graying civil servant.

"As Al's parole officer, I am responsible for keeping Algaliarept's behavior within acceptable parameters," he said, and Al cleared his throat and made an elegant bow. "And you," Dali added, pointing at Al, "are responsible for your student's."

That would be me, and I turned a smidge to show off my curves. So I wanted to appear attractive. So sue me. I was surrounded by perfection.

Al visibly swallowed back his ire. With a small breath, he seemed to gain two inches, again bowing with an overdone flourish and sending a foot to smack me to try to get me to do the same. "Assembled countrymen," he said as he gracefully straightened. "May I say-"

"No, Gally," Newt interrupted as she took up her wineglass again. "You've talked enough. Your student's ley line has degraded to the point where we're losing enough ever-after to give me a splitting headache."

It might be the wine she was drinking, but I, too, had a soft throbbing at the base of my skull where there'd been none this morning. I had blamed it on whatever had been in Trent's fridge, but maybe it was more. Behind us, the demons muttered agreement.

"Why," Newt said as she fixed her eerie black orbs on Al, "haven't you taught her how to line jump so she can fix it?"

"You think I don't want to?" Al took a step to distance himself from me, and I felt alone. "Her gargoyle is a baby of fifty years, but he's bound to her already so we simply have to wait. And before you mention it, the scar tissue my student received from that cretin in the front row trapping her in a ley line prevents any other gargoyle from breaking through her aura to teach her instead."

It was true, and I winced when Ku'Sox rose up, looking lean and elegant. "Blaming this on me? How gauche." His expression turned mocking. "And typical, I'm afraid."

"Why not?" I barked out, unable to help myself. "You're behind this."

The demons around him eased back to give him more room, and an uneasy murmur rose. "Careful, Rachel," Al said as he leaned forward, blocking my view of them.

Jittery, I pushed his hand off me. "Ku'Sox kidnapped Kalamack's daughter and his, ah, common-law wife," I said, exaggerating. "And then the lines go sour? All of them? Doesn't that seem a little odd to any of you?"

Again, the demons whispered among themselves, very aware of, and not liking, Ku'Sox's genocidal tendencies. Al was a lot more direct, and I pulled away when he pinched my elbow. "Stop trying to distract them. It's transparent and obvious."