Ever After (The Hollows 11)

Al gave me an askance look before rocking into motion, distancing himself. "I tweaked it until it was within proper parameters, but we can't do that with yours because it is a reality-to-reality-based line. Besides, you need to know how to jump a line first."

My jaw clenched, then relaxed. Bis had to teach me, and he was too young.

"Even so," Al said as he waved a dry stalk of ever-after grass through the purple line, then inspected it for damage, grunting as if something pleased him. "I don't think knowing how to jump a line will help. No, this purple shit is different." He straightened and dropped the stalk. "We should be able to do something about it. Buy us some time. Put us back where we were yesterday."

The first faint stirrings of hope began in me. "What do you have in mind?"

He flashed me a quick grin, and I felt as if I'd done something right. "Stay here," he said, waving his white-gloved hands dramatically. "I'll be right back."

"Al?" I called out, but he'd vanished. Nervous, I gazed across the bleak, sunbaked earth and the dry riverbed, feeling the bits of windblown earth hit me. I didn't like being alone on the surface, and I twirled my parasol. My hair was going to be impossible to get through tonight.

Almost immediately he stumbled back in, his head down and back hunched. "Ah, here," he said, his goat-slitted eyes meeting mine from over his dark-tinted glasses. "Put this on."

It was a small black ring, and I looked at it in my palm, seeing there was a new lump of a circlet under his glove. Uneasy, I eyed him.

"I'm not giving it to you," he huffed. "It's a loan. For a few minutes. I want it back."

"It's a ring," I said flatly, not able to tell if it was black gold or simply tarnished.

"Sharp as a tack, that one," Al grumped. "You want to put it on, now? Pick a finger."

I spread the fingers of my left hand, and I swear, he made a small noise of dismay. I looked up to see his jaw clenched. "What does it do?"

Al grimaced, shifting from foot to foot. "I, ah, it's a life rope of sorts. That is, me in the ever-after to pull your ass out of the fire if I'm wrong, and you in reality, fixing it."

Fixing the line was the entire point, and I didn't mind having a safety rope. If it was a ring, then that was cool. Still I hesitated; the ring seemed to soak in the harsh light. It was heavy on my palm, and I had the insane desire to drop it into a fire and see if an inscription appeared. I set the open parasol down, and it rolled in the wind until catching against a large rock.

"The rings will allow us to function as a single energy entity across the realities," Al said, standing almost sideways to me as he looked out over nothing. "I think."

"You think?" I said, starting to understand. "Is that like a power pull?"

Al leered, the wind shifting the gritty lank curls of his hair. "If you want."

Head shaking, I extended the ring back to him. "No."

He rolled his eyes, looking at the washed-out sky and refusing to take it. "You are utterly without a sense of humor today," he said, and my hand dropped. "We will simply be able to borrow upon and find each other's chi with minimal disruption."

These were more than just rings, and I wanted the truth of it. "Al," I said forcefully. "What are these? You have one, too. I can see it under your glove."

Shoulders slumping, he showed me his back. "Nothing," he said, the wind almost obliterating his voice. "They're nothing now but a way to yank your butt out of the fire." He turned around, and his lost look surprised me. "Go through the line to reality," he said, gesturing. "You should be able to hear me whether you're in the line or not if you have the ring on. You'll have a better chance fixing it if you work from the reality you made it from." I hesitated, and he added, "Think of them as a scrying mirror, without the eavesdropping."

Unsure, I looked at the simple band of tarnished metal. A private line to each other's thoughts was a rather questionable connection-not a violation as such, but very . . . personal. It didn't help that they looked like wedding bands.

Against my better judgment, I slipped the ring on my index finger. Wavering on my feet, I felt my consciousness expand. It was exactly like a scrying mirror, but the connection was tighter, far more intimate. I could feel not just Al's presence, but sense his masculinity, his worry, his concern. I could sense the limits of his chi, and I knew to the last iota how much it could hold, the power he could wield. It wasn't as much as I could. It wasn't that he lacked. Female demons had a naturally elevated ability to harbor two souls behind one aura, as in having a baby.

"Mother pus bucket," Al said breathily. "You've expanded your reach, Rachel."

Apparently he could see my abilities as well. "Is it supposed to feel like this?" I asked, heart pounding as I flicked a quick look at him.

"This isn't a good idea," Al said, seeming as uncomfortable as I was. "We might be able to do this with scrying mirrors."

I jumped when he took my hand to slip the ring from me. There was a pain in the back of his eyes that had nothing to do with me. My heart pounded, and not knowing why, I curved my fingers to make a fist. Al's attention jerked up, and I knew I must've looked panicked as he froze. "Ah, I'm good," I said, tense. "That is, if you're okay."

His lips twitched. "I didn't expect it to be . . ."

"What?" I prompted when he faltered.

"Exactly the way I remembered it," he said sourly, and he dropped my hand. "Go. Let me know when you're in reality standing outside the line. As I said, they function much as a scrying mirror."

He turned away, waiting, and I hesitated. He was staring out at the broken landscape of the ever-after, thinking of someone. I could feel it in his thoughts, the longing for something he'd lost so long ago that he'd forgotten even that he missed it.

My feet scuffed, and he tensed. Spinning the ring on my finger, I stepped into the line, being careful to stay clear of the purple center. Immediately the harsh discord renewed my headache, but almost before I recognized it, the pain seemed to halve. Al had taken some of it.

"Sorry," I said, and he spun, coattails furling and heartache carefully hidden.

"That's what the rings do," he said, urging me away with his gloved hands. "It's not anything I wasn't expecting. Go."

Nodding, I took a breath and moved myself into reality. Again I breathed the fresh air, relishing the warmth of the yellow sun and the soft hush of the wind in the trees. It was no wonder demons were bad-tempered. They lived in a virtual hell.

Remembering Al, I toned down my thoughts of relief.

Good, they work, he thought, and I squirmed as his masculine, domineering presence solidified in mine. I wasn't sure if they would between realities.

"Good Lord, can you ease up?" I asked, feeling as if he was breathing down my neck, and I felt him chuckle.

Uncomfortable?

I looked over the fallow, weed-choked garden, seeing the outlines of a man's dream of a perfect spot of truth. "A little, yes," I said, then sighed in relief when the spun-adrenaline feeling he was instilling in me seemed to fade. He was everything masculine, and having it so close was unnerving. "Thanks," I said, backing out of the line and looking at it with my second sight. I could see Al watching me like a foppish ghost from a romance novel. "So, how do I fix it?"

I changed my mind. You watch. I'll investigate. I'm going to follow the purple line inward, see if there's an aura signature on it. Maybe I can plug it. It's clearly a manufactured flaw, and as such, it will have a beginning and an end with which to unravel it.

I smiled. "And with proof, they will go after Ku'Sox!"

I'd rather fix it, he thought at me wryly. If we can't do that, we will all still die. That is, everyone but you and Ku'Sox.

My attention came up from where I'd been scuffing the grass. "Then you think he has a way around that curse?"

He nodded, and my heart pounded. "But you said not to step into the purple line."

That was before the rings.

Distrusting this, I stared at him, the red sheen of a dimensional barrier between us.

There's nothing in either reality that will sever our connection through the rings, he thought, glaring at me. If I get stuck, pull me out. Ah, without physically going into the purple shit, that is. If both of us are in there, what's the point of a lifeline?

Still I looked at him, weighing his body language against the emotions I was sensing through the rings. He was better than me at blocking them, and I wasn't sure why he was nervous. Al, I thought at him, hands on my hips. I don't like this plan.

We don't have time to find a plan you like. His thoughts slipped into mine, oily with deceit. Newt is paying for the volume lost with her own space. The sooner we get this hole plugged, the better. I just got my atrium back, and I don't want to lose it.

He was moving toward the purple line, and fear slid down my spine, magnified by Al's own worry. "Al!" I cried out, hand outstretched.

Al stopped, turned, and gave me a last look. Hold on to me, I saw him say, hearing it echo in my thoughts as well. Don't let go.

And then, he stepped into the purple line.

I gasped-it felt as if an ice pick was hammered into my skull from the top right to the bottom left. I screamed, falling to my knees. Al's pain. It was Al's pain, and I floundered, forcing my eyes open. I couldn't see him, and I panted, almost losing him in my thoughts. Forcing the bile down, I closed my eyes and searched for him with my mind. I was swimming in a black cloud of acid, unable to open my eyes, arms outstretched and burning as I followed down a rising trace of agony like bubbles to find him.

"Got you!" I gasped, and I wrapped my soul around his.

I flung myself backward with him, crying out because it felt as if my thoughts had been ripped apart. My back hit the scattered tufts of grass, and I stared up at a perfect blue sky. The pain was gone. Al wasn't with me.

"Al!" I scrambled to my feet, realizing what happened. I'd tried to pull him into reality when the sun was up. It wasn't happening. I couldn't feel him anymore, and in a panic, I rushed back into the line, willing myself into the ever-after with wild abandonment.

The line burned, scraping across me like sandpaper. Even with my second sight, I couldn't see Al, and I wondered if he had been sucked into that purple line. If I physically went in after him, we'd both be lost. I had to stay where I was. But perhaps with the rings . . . Maybe I could find him with my mind and bring both his body and soul back?

I gave one last look at the broken, red-sheened world the demons were consigned to-a hell of their own making designed to entrap and kill the elves but that had only damned themselves. And then, falling to my knees, I closed my eyes and sent my mind into the line, letting it be pulled into the purple-black nothing.

My breath came out in a pained whimper, and I fell against the dry earth, my hands spasmodically clenching on the broken rock, my cheek pressed into the dirt. My mind was squished to a thin line, my thoughts reduced to a colorless state. My heart beat, and that hurt even more.

Al! I thought, and the pain redoubled as I found him, struggling to think, starved for thought under the crushing pressure. There were sparkles in my distant fingertips and toes. I was suffocating. If I didn't get us out of here soon, I was going to forget how to breathe and we'd both die.

My skin and thoughts on fire, I wrapped what I could of myself around the echo of emotion that was left of Al. With one last agonizing push of will, I sent us home, back to where my body jerked in convulsions in the red dust.

The harsh wind of the ever-after hit me like a slap. The heavy weight of Al slammed into me, and we both cried out as he slid to the earth. Sharp fragments of stone bit into my side, and I heard him take a sobbing breath of air. I tried to move, my scream of pain coming out as a whimper. My thoughts still burned, and I finally got my eyes open.

We were in the ever-after, the humming ley line still unchanged above us, still holding that core of purple nothing. Beside me, Al lay askew, his green velvet coat charred, mimicking the state of his mind, his aura. Pain-racked, I managed to sit up, tears running down my face as my eyes tried to clear. My clothes were untouched, and I wondered how much of this pain was mine and how much was Al's.

Al's body shifted as he took a ragged breath, and I touched him, my hand shaking and the ring glinting a bright silver white in the red air. It was black no longer, the tarnish burned away.

"Al?" I croaked. The sun hurt, but I couldn't reach the parasol, shifting back and forth in the wind that scoured me to my bones.

"I thought you'd . . . left . . . me."