Ever After (The Hollows #11)(105)
Author: Kim Harrison

A wave of force pushed from her, and I squinted as the air was pressed from my lungs. Belle was gone, and I panicked. I couldn’t move my legs, and they felt like they were on fire.

"I have to kill you now," the crazed demon said, and I choked as she pressed into my throat. "And I was doing so well. If I don’t, they’ll believe that I’m responsible for all of this!"

"Fine. Great. But don’t hurt my friends," I gasped, my hands trying to shove her off me. "Please."

The muscles of her jaw smoothed, and her shoulders eased. "Don’t hurt your friends?"

"Please," I wheezed, my grasping fingers brushing the tips of her hair. If it had been an inch longer, I could have pulled her off balance. "My friends. Belle, she’s the fairy-she’s a great warrior. She protects the pixy children who live here. Jenks needs to be alive to help Ivy. Ivy is trying to live with her guilt. Please don’t ruin her. She’s so beautiful inside."

The fervor of her eyes diminishing, Newt eased up, clearly confused, and I took a grateful gasp of air. "And help Bis," I said, my hands dropping to her staff, trying to push just an inch more of space between us and failing. My arms, too, felt like they were on fire. "If you have to kill me, will you help Bis? Will you do that for me? He deserves better than to be with Ku’Sox the rest of his life. He’s just a baby."

"Bis?"

She was confused, and I forged ahead. "And take Al his chrysalis." My eyes darted to the window. I couldn’t see it; the angle was wrong. "It’s right there on the sill," I said, wishing she would turn to look. "He thinks he can’t love anymore, but I know he can. Tell him he was right. He used to have wings. They were like stretched moonlight. Tell him I’m sorry."

Newt took a step back, her grip falling from me. "You know what we looked like?"

Slowly I sat up against the table and rubbed my throat. Ivy was still out. So was Jenks. Belle was standing guard over him, fierce and determined. I didn’t know where Nick was. I didn’t care. "I saw the pools of shallow water, the moss green branches overhead," I said, voice ragged. "The fog that muffled and soothed the sun." Newt dropped back another step, her hands loose on her ebony staff, confusion in her eyes. I coughed, sending ribbons of fire to flare and die in my limbs. "The ever-after was a paradise. What happened?"

"We killed it."

I looked up to see Newt lost in a memory.

"Both the elves and us in our war," she said, her grip going white on her staff. "Together we killed the ever-after. They could flee. We were left to wallow in our shared war waste. We make it worse with every curse, but we have no choice. To survive, we must set things even more out of balance."

Somehow I wasn’t surprised that the elf-demon war was to blame. "I’m sorry."

Newt’s focus sharpened, and her long face grew tight again. "I didn’t want to kill you. They made me do it."

"I’m not dead quite yet." Still holding my throat, I slid to the edge of the table and cautiously slipped off. Pinpricks of fire like the stars of returning circulation burst against my skin and vanished. Newt shifted her staff, and I eyed her sourly. Clearly she was having a bad Newt day. "Since when does anyone make you do anything?"

I crouched to feel for a pulse at Ivy’s wrist, and Newt’s face was ugly when I turned back. "They think I’m plotting with you," she said angrily. "Because I petitioned for time for you. Because my rooms are no longer shrinking. Al has been imprisoned, but I was told to kill you. If I do, they’ll not only let me live another day, but they might listen to me."

Al was in jail? Crap on toast, it was down to Quen and me.

"Ku’Sox is at fault," Newt admitted bitterly. "It’s easier to blame you. Killing him is impossible. Killing you is merely hard."

That was kind of nice. Killing me being hard, not easy.

Jenks was sitting up and holding his head, wings askew. Belle crouched beside him, whispering in his ear as her eyes never left Newt. "If you kill me," I said, cautiously moving to sit in my chair, "you’ll all only live another week, tops." I gestured helplessly. "The reason your rooms aren’t shrinking is because I fixed your line. That’s why it is the only one that sounds right anymore. If I had Bis, I could fix them all. Can you get him back for me? Now?"

Newt backed up, confusion in her stance and apparently not knowing what to do if I didn’t attack her. "No. You make it sound easy, not killing you."

"Easy?" I pushed out Ivy’s chair for Newt with my foot and she stared at it in distrust. "It is easy. What I’ve had to do to save you dumb-asses is hard. First I had to figure out a way to fix the line. And when I do, you let Ku’Sox take Bis from me. I somehow find a way to prove Ku’Sox broke it, and then they convince you to kill me before my deadline. And now I not only have to prove Ku’Sox broke my line, but then survive doing so without Al? Without anyone? Ku’Sox wants you all dead. My God, why do you keep believing him?"

Newt glanced at Ivy, then back to me. "We made him. He owes us his life. He’s going to bring the demons back to the sun with the demon children he has stolen. You owe us nothing. Why would you help us?"

I honestly don’t know. An elbow on the table, I felt my neck. "Ku’Sox is a liar and a psychotic genius. I’ve had a very bad week, Newt. A very bad week. And to top it off, I don’t have anything in my closet that is suitable to wear while saving the world."

"Are you sure?"

Head tilted, I met her eyes. God, I was tired. "You’ve seen it. Not much has changed since then."

Newt’s black eyes narrowed. "No, I mean are you sure that . . ." She hesitated, glancing at Ivy. "Are you sure you can prove Ku’Sox is betraying us, not you?"

A rueful chuckle slipped from me. It must have surprised her, because she backed up almost to the door, her staff held defensively before her. "Given half a chance," I said. "Can you just hold off until tomorrow to kill me? By sunset tomorrow, I can prove all this was Ku’Sox’s fault or he will have killed me himself. If we’re both around come sunup, you can kill who you want, and we can all get on with our lives."

Newt shook her head mistrustfully. Ivy was starting to come around, and Jenks made a slow, wobbly flight to her, hopefully to tell her to pretend to still be out. "We’re losing too much space. It has to be now."

My toes were the only part of me still tingling, and I looked at them. When did I get a hole in my sock? "You can’t give me one lousy day?"

Slowly, hardly moving, Ivy sat up against the wall, holding her head. I made the finger motion for her to not move, and Jenks whispered it since she couldn’t focus yet.