Ever After (The Hollows #11)(130)
Author: Kim Harrison

Curious, I went to investigate, smiling when I saw a black-and-white photo of his mother tucked beside a lit candle and a small fingerbowl of fragrant ash. On sudden impulse, I set the flower I had found beside the candle. My fingers brushed the candle as I pulled back, and my head jerked up at the wash of warm sparkles that numbed it. Faint in my thoughts, wild magic burbled and laughed, and I curled my fingers under.

"She’s beautiful," I said, looking at the photo with my hands behind my back.

"You can pick it up."

The soft sounds of his making coffee were pleasant in the extreme. I tentatively reached for it, finding the ornate silver frame surprisingly heavy. It wasn’t sparking wild magic, so I took it to the fire to see it better, dropping my bag on the floor and sitting on the edge of the seat to tilt the photo to the light.

Trent’s mother was smiling, squinting at the wind that had taken a wayward strand of her long hair. Behind her was a mountain I didn’t recognize. Beside her, looking just as wild and free, was Ellasbeth’s mother. There were flowers in their hair, and deviltry in their eyes. I’d guess it was taken before they had come to Cincinnati. I wondered who’d snapped the picture. I found my lips curving up to smile back at them. "You have her face," I said softly, then flushed.

Trent noisily put the lid on the teapot. Bringing it to the fire, he set it on the hearth. There was a kettle in his other hand, moisture beading up on it as he set it on a hook and shoved it over the flames. "It’s going to take a while. There is no electricity out here."

"I’m in no hurry." No electricity meant no way in or out when a circle was set. This was more than a getaway; it was a spelling fortress. I suddenly realized Trent’s eyes were on the photo, and I stretched to set it back on the small table beside the candle. "Do you bring people here often?"

Trent sat gingerly down in the other chair. His eyes roved over the room, trying to see it as I might be. "Not often, no."

Not ever, maybe, by the looks of it, and I waited for more, grimacing when it became obvious there wasn’t any. "Ah, so are you ready for the curse?" I said, and his breathing hesitated a bare instant.

"If you are."

He was annoyingly short-answered tonight, his mood closed and somewhat stiff, but seeing as I was going to curse him, I didn’t blame him-even if the curse was going to fix his hand. I’d stirred it myself under Al’s eye, and I’d admit that I was more than a little nervous.

Trent slid back into the chair as I lifted my bag onto my lap and dug inside for my scrying mirror. My fingertips tingled as I found it, cramping up as I brought it out and set it on my knees. I had prepped the curse over the course of the week, storing it in Al’s private space in the collective. All I would have to do was tap a line, find the collective, and say the magic words to access it. "If this doesn’t work . . ." I started, and Trent waved me to silence.

"Rachel, you turned Winona back into a human guise. You can repair my fingers."

I wasn’t so confident, and I settled back, then scooted forward, the scrying mirror making my knees ache with the magic taking notice of where I was. Like a slime mold after the sun, it stretched and dove for the tiny sliver of line that ran not five feet away.

"It shouldn’t hurt," I added, feeling my fingers slip as I started to sweat. "If it does, just say the words of invocation again, and it will reverse as long as it hasn’t sealed yet. Okay?"

He nodded, and his jaw tightened.

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.