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He spun, motions fast as he found the unburnt signature still on the
table. There was a swallow of water left in the bowl. It had to be enough.
I am Rachel Morgan, I thought, teeth gritted as the soul rifled through
my memories like some people
shake old books for money. I live in a
church with a vampire and a family of pixies. I fight the bad guys. And I will
not let you have my body!
You can’t stop me.
The thought was oily, hysteria set to discordant music. It hadn’t been
my thought, and I panicked. It was right, though. I was powerless to stop
it, and as soon as it looked at everything and claimed what it wanted, I was
going to be discarded.
“Get out!” I screamed, but its fingers reached into my heart and brain
for more, and I groaned, feeling control over my body start to slip away.
“Pierce, get it out of me!” I begged, doubled over on the cold black floor,
silver etchings like threads under my cheek. Everything I didn’t concentrate
on was gone. The moment I lapsed, I would be too.
I smelled the scent of burnt paper, and the soft murmur of Latin.
“Sunt qui discessum animi a corpore putent esse mortem,” Pierce said, his
hand shaking as he brushed the hair from my face. Beside him was the
empty bowl. “Sunt erras.”
“This is mine!” I cried gleefully, but it wasn’t me screaming. It was the
soul, who had found the knowledge that my blood could invoke demon
magic and held it aloft like a jewel. I got in one clean gasp of air as it was
distracted, and I opened my eyes. “Pierce . . . ,” I whispered desperately, for
his attention, then choked when the soul realized I still had some control.
“Mine!” the soul snarled with my lips, and I backhanded Pierce across
the cheek.
Oh God, I’d lost, and I felt myself pull my legs under me to crouch
before the fire like an animal. I’d lost my body to a thousand-year-old
soul! My lips curled back, and I grinned at Pierce’s horror, even as I tried
to claw my way back into control. But even my connection to the ley line
belonged to it.
“Get away from her!” I heard Al exclaim, and with the sound of
smacking flesh, Pierce slid backward against the tapestry. Al.
Hissing, I spun to him, crouched and hands turned to claws. It is a
demon, echoed in my thoughts, and hatred bubbled up, a thousand years
of hatred demanding revenge.
I jumped at him with a howl, and Al grabbed me by the neck. I clawed
at him, and he casually thunked my head into the wall. Pain reverberated
between my skull and reason, and in the haze, my reactions were faster
than the alien soul’s. I took control, grabbed the ley line, and threw a protection
bubble about the soul within me. It was still dazed from the thunk
on the head, and I had the upper hand. But for how long?
Struggling to focus, I latched onto Al’s hands around my throat.
God, I was never so happy to see him. “Rachel?” he asked, an understandable
question at this point.
“For a little bit longer, yeah, you son of a bitch,” I panted, terrified as I
felt the soul in me start to recover. “You told me it was an aura. It’s a goddamned
soul! You lied to me! You lied to me, Al! And it’s . . . taking me
over, you son of a bitch!”
His eyes narrowed as he looked across the room at Pierce. “I told you
to watch her!”
“Accident,” Pierce said as he untangled his legs. “She dropped a candle.
The early scratchings burned, and she put it out with the water. The
soul wasn’t harnessed by invocation before escaping. I twisted the curse to
get it out of her. I don’t understand why it didn’t work!”
Al let go of my neck and swung me into his arms, cradling me. “You’re
not a demon, runt,” he said distantly, talking to Pierce as he peered into
my eyes. “You can’t hold a soul other than your own.”
But Al thought I could? I took a breath as I stared at Al’s red eyes, then
another, feeling the soul in me begin to push against the protection circle,
probing, looking for a way to regain control. I jerked when a slow flame
started in my mind, burning, expanding. It howled against the inside of
my skull, and my hands twitched. “Get it . . . out!” I forced past my
clenched teeth. I couldn’t fight forever.
Al’s goat-slitted eyes showed a flash of panic, and I felt him sit down
before the fire, right there on the floor. “Let me in, Rachel. Into your
thoughts. You’ve got Krathion in there. I can separate him from you, but
you have to let me in. Let go and stop fighting so I can come in!”
He wanted me to stop fighting? “He’ll take over!” I panted, gripping
his arm when a new wave of outrage spun through me. “He’ll kill me! Al,
this soul is crazy!”
Al shook his head. “I won’t let you die. I’ve got too much invested in
you.” The look in his eyes scared me—it wasn’t love, but it wasn’t just the
fear of losing an investment either. “Let me in!” he demanded as I clenched
in pain. Shit, I was drooling. He didn’t say trust me, but it was in his eyes.
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 inbetween
place I’d 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. Gally, 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.” I 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.
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