Ever After (The Hollows 11)

I took a breath. Exhaling, I gently reached for a line, my fingers jerking on the glass as it spilled into me with an icy suddenness. The lines had been painfully sharp since I'd dove through all of them, almost as if their clarity had improved a hundredfold. The glass hummed with a myriad of conversations, whispers on the edge of my awareness, drops and swells of power as demons went about their daily grind of fighting boredom. The collective felt warm, peaceful for once, and I felt my eyes slip shut as the heat of the fire mixed with the blanket of spent adrenaline still holding the collective in a muzzy contentment. Oh, if only it could last.

Leaving the puddled warmth behind, I willed a small part of my thoughts into Al's storeroom, shocked when my muscles seemed to lose their focus. A heavy lassitude filled me, and I wondered if Al was asleep. I'd never encountered this when storing or accessing spells in Al's private space before. The way the collective was set up was that private curses were stored in private spaces, and public curses were stored where everyone could access them, be they the stuff to get rid of warts or entire species. Use a public curse, and you took on the smut for its creation-plus whatever smut the maker tacked on to it. It was how some demons tried to get rid of their smut, a dubious attempt at best.

"Here," I said brusquely, feeling dizzy as I held out my hand across the space between us. "I didn't want to risk making a charm tailored to you specifically in case the identifying factor could be used against you, so I need to touch you to focus the curse."

"Does it have to be my right hand?" he asked, and I blinked, trying to focus on him. I felt half drunk-without the mild euphoria.

"It can be your foot, for all that it matters," I said, and he scooted forward, slipping his left hand into mine. It was cold, and I gripped it tighter. "Non sum qualis eram," I said to access the proper curse, one hand in his, the other on the mirror.

I stiffened as the energy spilled up through me, shaking off the smut of the curses around it and shining with a dull gleam in my mind. I pay the cost for this, I thought, wondering how I got to this point: willingly taking the smut for a curse to help Trent. Warm and chattering through my synapses like water around rocks, the curse sped from my mind to my chi, pulling energy along behind it until it dove through my hand and into Trent.

His hand spasmed, clenching hard enough on mine to hurt.

"It's done," I said, and he let go, holding his right hand up to the flickering firelight. My shoulders eased as I saw five fingers there, five perfect fingers. Exhaling, I flopped back into my chair, relieved. I'd used a modified healing curse to set his body back to the DNA sample stored in the collective, a memento of his time as a familiar. It would have all the tweaking that his father had done, not only preserving his life but extending it.

As well as fixing his hand, I thought, pleased that I could do this one thing. It was good to be whole and unscarred.

And then I looked up at him and paled. Oh no.

The pleasure in Trent's expression hesitated as he saw my face. "What?"

My mouth opened as I stared at his ears, but I didn't quite know how to tell him, and my face warmed. His ears were pointed, just like Lucy's and Ray's. Shit, I thought that his dad had fixed them by tinkering with his DNA, not cropping them like a Doberman.

"Um . . ." I started, then jumped when the silver bell hanging suspended above the fireplace made a single beautiful peal of sound.

Trent looked up, startled, and then we both flung ourselves backward from the heavy burst of burnt-amber-tainted air that exploded on the hearth. I gasped as Al popped into the room. Shrinking backward, I pulled my legs up onto the chair. Trent had stood, shoving his chair back nearly three feet as the demon in his crushed green velvet coat all but rolled into the fire, arms and legs askew.

"Al!" I shouted when he came to a grunting halt. Then I cried, "Al!" in a panic. "You're on fire!"

His sleeve flaming, he sat up, blinking from behind his blue-tinted glasses sitting halfway off his face. "Oh, look at that," he slurred as he set a black bottle down to pat at his arm. "I am on fire."

"Get him out of here, Rachel," Trent said in a bad temper as he stood to the side, his expression lost in the shadows. "This is intolerable."

I winced, glancing at Al when he began to giggle at the flames he was making dance on his fingertips. "I'm sorry," I said as I unfolded myself from the chair, really meaning it. "There's no reason for him to show up." I turned to Al. "Al, you need to leave. Now."

But the damage had already been done. And it wasn't like I had a say in the matter.

"Don't want to go . . ." the demon slurred as he took a swig from the bottle and scooted to lean against the rock next to the firebox, his knees pulled up and his head thrown back. "I heard you tap a line, and I came for a visit. It's so quiet. There's no one about, no parties, no one to flay, to torture." He blinked, as if seeing the ceiling for the first time. "Where am I?"

I glanced at Trent now moving quietly through the room, gathering things up and shoving them into drawers. The candle at the shrine was out. "Oh my God," I said, peering closer at Al. "You're drunk!"

Trent shoved a tiny window open in anger, and Al raised his bottle in salute. "No, I'm not," he protested. Then . . . "Wait, I am. Yes. I am drunk. You have no idea how hard it was to get to this mar-r-rvelous state of disconnection." Wavering, he looked past me to an open cupboard. "Oh, look, there's more."

As I watched helplessly, Al staggered upright, stumbling to a rack holding six bottles of white wine I hadn't noticed before. At a loss, I turned back to Trent, immediately seeing his ears.

"This is elf wine!" Al announced loudly, and Trent frowned. "Oh, Rachel, this stuff is toxic. Knock you on your ass. Where are we?"

"Somewhere you shouldn't be," I said, frustrated. Trent had opened up to me, showed me something important and fragile to him, and I go and bring Al into it. That it was an accident didn't mean anything. My gut hurt, and seeing my scrying mirror, I scooped it up and held it up to Trent so he could see himself.

Trent frowned at his red-tinted reflection. Then his eyes went wide and he grabbed the mirror from me, holding it closer, tilting his head to see. In the corner, Al began to laugh uproariously, the bottle of elf wine lighter than when he had taken it. "She gave you your ears back, little elf!" he said, and I cringed. The night had started out so nice, too.

"I'm sorry," I said, miserable. "I thought that your ears were changed at the cellular level, genetically stunted. I didn't know they had been surgically altered."

"Pointy ears. Pointy-eared devil," Al said as Trent held the mirror with one hand and felt his ear with the other. "This is good," he added, squinting at the bottle. "Ha! It's your label."

I couldn't tell what Trent was thinking, and I cringed when he finally met my eyes. "I can change them back . . ."

"No, this is fine." He took a last look, then handed the mirror to me. "Um . . . I like it."

He was lying, and I hunched miserably into myself. From the corner, Al said, "Want me to cut them for you?"

"No!" Trent exclaimed, then shifted on his feet nervously. "This is good," he said as if trying to convince himself. "Ray and Lucy have natural ears. It's fitting that I do, too."

"You sure?"

He looked a little ill, but he was smiling. "Yes, I'm sure. Thank you."

One foot cocked behind the other, Al leaned heavily on the counter and belched. "At least your hair will stop falling into your eyes with those huge wings of yours."

I stiffened. "They are not huge," I said crossly. "Trent, don't listen to him. They're just right. Seriously, I can fix them," I said, reaching to touch them.

Trent's hand on my wrist stopped me. "I like them," he said, and I froze. Letting go, he retreated to his chair, sitting down and unlacing his dress shoe.

"What are you doing now?" Al questioned, listing heavily as he tucked another one of those bottles under his arm and staggered for the cot half hidden behind a curtain. "Seeing if your circumcision is gone? It is."

My expression went blank, and Trent hesitated, a silk sock in his hand as he felt the underside of his big toe. He looked at me, and I put a hand to my mouth, face flaming. "Oh. My. God. Trent. I'm sorry." Crap on toast, could I screw this up any more?

"Um," Trent said, clearly at a loss.

"Call me tomorrow," Al said seriously, pointing at him with a bottle as he reclined on the cot. "I've got a curse that will take care of that."

"Ah, I had a scar on my big toe," Trent said, his thoughts clearly scattered. "It rubbed sometimes." He put his sock back on, the firelight making the creases in his forehead obvious.

"Unless you like the snake in a turtleneck look," Al said, and I hung my head and massaged my temples. "Ceri did. But she was earthy in her desires. Delightful little animal she was."

Al went suddenly still, his breath rattling as if he was in pain. Ceri. Suddenly I understood. That was why he was drunk. But it didn't excuse Al's presence. "I'm so sorry," I whispered, mortified. "I didn't think-"

"She called it my purse of delight," Al was saying to the ceiling, flopped back on the cot until only his legs showed beyond the curtain, one foot on the cot, the other draped down onto the floor. A little sob came from him. "I should have freed her. I should have freed her . . ."

Trent had turned away, his steps long as he strode to the wine rack. "Rachel, have you tried my family label?" he asked, almost frantic as he searched for a corkscrew. "It's fairly palatable for having been grown at this latitude. My father shoved a few more genes into a species or two for better sugar production." Hands shaking, he poured white wine into a glass, downing it in one go. If I didn't know him better, I would say he was babbling.

This was going really well, and I glumly sat back down on the raised hearth, my elbows on my knees and my head in my hands. The kettle had begun to steam, and I pushed it off the fire. I didn't feel like coffee, and by the looks of it, neither did Trent. From behind the curtain, Al was either singing or crying. I couldn't tell. Asking him to jump out probably wasn't a good idea.

The clink of glasses brought my head up, and I wasn't surprised when Trent gingerly sat next to me, setting the glasses on the hearth between us and filling them both. "He misses Ceri," I said softly, to which Trent nodded, his own eyes filled with a private heartache.

"Miss that little bitch?" Al said, the curtain fluttering as he tried to get up. Arm waving, he managed it, his eyes haunted. His next words were lost when he saw the twin glasses, one of which Trent was handing to me. His heartache deepened, and he held his bottle high. "Yes, a toast to Ceri." His bottle sloshed as he shook it. "You were a most exceptional familiar." His arm dropped, and for a moment, there was silence. "I should have freed you, Ceridwen. Perhaps you would have sung to me again if I had."

I thought of Al's blue butterflies, and I set my drink down untasted. The last thing I needed was to add a headache to this. "I'm sorry, Al," I said, my eyes welling up.

"She was a familiar, nothing more," he slurred, swinging the bottle. "Why should I care?" But it was clear he did. "Miss her? Ha!" he cried. "That elf woman was useless! Hardly able to warm my coffee in the morning. Pierce did a better job of keeping to my schedule. I wouldn't take her back even if I could get that damned resurrection curse to work." His head drooped, and I hoped he would pass out soon. "She was forever waking me up in the morning, crashing the cupboard doors. The bitch."

Beside me, Trent seemed to start. "She did that to me as well, every time I tried to sleep in on the weekends. Then she'd smile at me as if she didn't know she'd woken me."

"Crashing about," Al said, gesturing with the bottle. "Making more noise than a box of squirrels. She did it on purpose, I tell you. On purpose!"

Trent shook his head as we watched Al begin to become unconscious. "The woman could stomp like an elephant," Trent said softly, leaning to whisper in my ear and make me shiver. "Quen threatened to smack her."

"Yes, thrash her," Al said, slumping back against the wall. "But she always had my coffee and toast to distract me." His expression became serious. "You cannot thrash the person who makes you coffee. It's a rule somewhere." Blinking, Al slumped against the wall, his hair pushing up behind him. "It was a sad day when she stopped singing. You can't keep a caged bird. No matter how beautiful she is. Maybe if I had freed her. But she would have left me. This is hell, you know? My rooms are so quiet."

I shifted on the raised hearth to build the fire up. I had a feeling we might be here for a while, and this was the only light source besides Trent's lantern in the window.