Ever After (The Hollows 11)

Al stopped fussing with the basket, his head down. "I know you want to use my rings. You aren't strong enough to overpower Ku'Sox alone. No one is, not even two demons together. Not three. Five, it took last time, and since only four walked away from the encounter, no one is willing to try again. Especially when there are bribes of mended demon babies with which to escape to the sun in."

"You know?" I said, my surprise quickly vanishing.

He eyed me as if embarrassed. "Of course. I was burned, not lobotomized. My wedding rings are not enough." Pulling them from a pocket, he pushed them around in his palm with a bare finger. "Even if you and I wore them and stood before Ku'Sox, they would not be enough."

I was starting to get mad. Why did I have to do this all by myself? "You've given up!"

A weary slump came over him. "Rachel . . . We made him to be better than us, able to crush an elf warlord on his own. My rings are not enough."

"But I know how to fix the line!" I protested, and he reached up to set his rings on the slate table beside him. "It's not broken, just overloaded. Ku'Sox shoved all the tiny imbalances in your collective lines into mine, making them more than the sum of their energies. Bis and I separated Newt's signature imbalance from that purple sludge and got it back into the line she made."

His eyes widened, and I stifled a shudder at the new blackness of them. "Interesting," he said, tossing another chunk of earth on the flames. "The loss is keyed to individual lines . . . and you separated one?" Settling himself deeper into the flagstones, he seemed to find strength with the fire behind him. "Is this why Newt's room are not shrinking anymore?"

"Probably," I said, wondering if there was a direct connection between the imbalance, the leak, and the missing mass. If so, she wasn't going to like my dumping the imbalance into her line. "That's why Ku'Sox took Bis. But I don't need Bis to move the entire ball of sludge to Newt's line and expose Ku'Sox's curse."

Al's expression twisted. "Whereupon he will descend upon you and-"

"Turn me into a dark spot on the ever-after floor. Yeah," I said, picking at a seam in the floor. "I was hoping that once I proved he did it that maybe some of you might . . . I don't know . . . help me maybe!" I shouted, frustrated.

Chuckling, Al resettled himself. "I would, but it will take at least five, not counting you because you don't know squat."

I would have argued with him, but he was right. "Quen will stand with us. And Trent, if we can get him free."

Al stiffened at Trent's name. "Elf magic might prevail where demon can't," he admitted grudgingly. "As much as I'm loath to admit it, Trent would be the better choice." He poked at the fire to send up a flurry of copper-colored sparks. "He's a savage beast with a strong bond to his trickster goddess." His eyes met mine in warning. "Powerful, but chaotic. Untrustworthy."

It wasn't a ringing endorsement, but surprisingly promising, and I eyed him from around my snarling hair. "Are you saying that elf magic is more powerful than demon?"

"I would never admit that," he said with a guffaw. "But Ku'Sox knows demon magic. Elf magic, from the old wars? Not so much."

The way he was looking at me made me nervous, and I dropped my eyes.

"Mmm," he grumbled, apparently satisfied. "Demons acting in concert isn't enough. To surpass Ku'Sox, there must be a complete melding of thoughts into one action. My rings only work between demons. There's no way to join an elf soul to a demon."

There is, I thought, suddenly scared to say it. "Ah, that's kind of why I'm here . . ." Heart pounding, I extended my arm and opened my palm, the firelight glinting on the rings.

Al leaned forward in interest, his thick bare fingers brushing against mine as he took the rings. "These are . . . Where did you get these?" he said, his black eyes narrowed as he made a fist around them, hatred pouring from him.

My lips parted. Scared, I fought to keep from backing up. His grip on the rings looked tight enough to crush them. My thought went back to what Quen had said about demons perhaps being slaves first. "The museum. I wanted something else, but they were gone when I got there, and these were-" I gasped when his fist clenched. "Al, no!" I shouted, grabbing his hand and trying to pry open his fingers. "Don't break them! It's all I have! Please!"

He snarled at me, the lines in his square features heavy and ugly. With a grimace, he yanked out of my grip and threw the rings into the corner. My breath came fast, and I lunged after the twin pinging sounds, scrabbling like a spider as I found first one, then the other.

I held them tight to my chest, my back to him as my pulse pounded. He would never help me. Head high, I walked back to the fire with the rings in my shaking hand.

"Elven slavers!" Al growled. "They are ugly, and I have done a lot of ugly, Rachel."

"Ku'Sox is uglier," I said stiffly. "This is what I have. I'm going to use them. If I can hold him off long enough, maybe the rest of you cowards will stand up to him."

"Except the rings are dead." Al's voice was harsh.

I stood before him, the fire warming my shins. I wasn't sure how he was going to react once I told him I could bring them back to life. "I, ah, can reinvoke them."

He looked up at me, a sour anger in the tilt of his head. "No one can reinvoke them."

Sitting down, I scooted until our knees almost touched. "I reinvoked elven silver two days ago with Pierce's help."

Taking up a poker, he jabbed it into the flames. They were slavers. He'd never help me. "So go ask him," Al muttered, clearly not believing me.

"He's dead. Nick helped him escape Newt so he and Ceri could try to kill Ku'Sox."

"Ceridwen?" Al's head snapped up. "What does she have to do with this?"

I suddenly remembered that she'd been with him for a thousand years, that he'd been so careless when replacing her as his familiar that I'd been able to save her life. Looking back, I think he'd done it intentionally. And all this time I'd thought that I'd been more clever than he. God, I was stupid. I think he had loved her.

"Al, I'm sorry," I whispered, kicking myself for not considering that he might feel pain at her loss. "Ku'Sox-"

Al extended a shaky hand to stop my words, his head dropping. "Enough," he said, the hard sound of his voice a band of metal around my heart, squeezing, hurting.

I shifted closer, the scent of burnt amber coming from the fire stinging my eyes. Al had taken a deep breath, and I watched as he slowly exhaled, his hands unclenching. "I'm sorry. I thought you knew. Didn't Newt tell-"

"I said enough!"

I hunched into myself, my own grief welling up as I watched him shove his own down, denying its existence. "Al, I need your help," I whispered, and he seemed to become a dark lump before the low flames. "I only have until tomorrow midnight. I've done this before. I don't know why it's not working."

Al's shoulders were slumped under that blanket, and his expression was numb. I wasn't even sure he was listening anymore. "You don't know what you ask."

"It's the only way to make a sure connection between an elf and a demon," I said. "And since no demon will help me . . ."

Al's head turned from the fire. His black eyes bore into me, and I stifled another shudder. "Top shelf," he said flatly. "Behind the books."

I followed his gaze to one of the few open bookcases. Silently I stood and shoved the rings in my front pocket. Feeling his eyes on me, I crossed the room, counting my steps. It was smaller by about a foot. My hands were steady as I stood on tiptoe, one hand on the shelf for balance as I moved three books out of the way, my hand searching blindly in the small space behind them. A jolt went through me as I found the cool, smooth shape of a ring.

"Don't put it on," Al cautioned as my heels came down and I turned with a ring in my hand. It was tiny, almost a pinkie ring. I wondered whose it was, since it wouldn't fit on Al's hand. Unless . . . he was in the shape of that gaunt black bat.

"What is it?" I asked, cold but too wary to come back to the fire.

"Half of a set," he grudgingly said, his eyes down as he snatched it from me, cradling the ring to him as if it were alive. My eyes widened as I realized it was his shackle, his tie to a miserable past. "I want you to see this," he said. "To know what you risk."

"I'm sorry," I said softly as I came forward to sit cross-legged before him again. He was flushed, embarrassed and ashamed to be clearly still tied to it. "Where's the other half?"

Al smiled a savage, ugly smile. "Gone, along with its owner."

My eyes fell. I couldn't look at him. Al had been a slave? "Al-"

"I trusted once."

I couldn't say anything, huddled cold before his fire in his shrinking room, failing world.