Ever After (The Hollows #11)(31)
Author: Kim Harrison

"Yes," Newt said, her smile chilling me as she took my hand and looked at it, noticing perhaps that I now had a metal pinkie ring instead of a wooden one. "You go balance that line. And in the meantime, Rachel’s debt to me grows with each passing second."

I winced as I pulled my hand from hers, but what could I say? I did have some income here from the use of the tulpa I’d made for Dalliance.

Al was huffing and puffing, but I knew there was no deal we could get that was better than our continued survival.

"Al," Newt said sharply before he could protest. "If your student dies, that debt reverts to you."

Al glanced at Dali, and then back to her. "Looking forward to it," he grumbled, his hand on my shoulder tightening.

Newt’s black gaze was on the wisp of my tattoo that showed, and I managed a nervous smile. "Thank you," I said as she turned to leave, and she spun slowly back to us.

"Don’t thank me now, love. Save it till the morning after."

In a hush of inrushing air, Newt vanished like a Cheshire cat. Feeling ill and scared, I turned to Al. "Can we go home?"

"No," he said, simultaneously leading me down off the dais and waving to Dali as if everything was A-Okay, not Oh Shit. "But I agree we need to leave."

I hopped from the raised stage, and Al’s hands left my wrist. I felt small as I looked at the stone bench Ku’Sox had been sitting on. "It’s him," I said, and Al growled. "Ku’Sox has done something to the line. You know it, too. He’s got those kids, and this is all an elaborate con to destroy the ever-after and blame me for it."

"If you can’t prove it, it doesn’t mean shit," Al said, but as I balked, he sighed and rubbed his head. "Fine," he grumbled as he took my arm as if to escort me. "The sun is still up, but let’s go look at your line."

"How?" I said, knowing he couldn’t be in reality when the sun was above the horizon, but it was too late and the soft ache of the ley line had taken me.

Chapter Eight

The red sun of the ever-after hurt my eyes, and I squinted, holding up a hand as I stood on dusty red soil made of pulverized rock and felt the gritty wind push at me. Al and I had come in on a slightly raised plateau. Before us snaked a dry riverbed. To our left was a slump of broken rock where Loveland Castle was in reality. Sprigs of waist-high yellow grass were scattered about, and a few stunted trees were all that was left of the woods that surrounded the castle in reality. Here in the ever-after, it was desolate.

Between us and the pile of rock, a ley line shimmered, more of a heat image than anything else in the sunbaked wind. The line was making me feel slightly nauseated, almost seasick. The leak? I wondered. As a gargoyle, Bis would know, but he’d be hard to wake until the sun went down.

Beside me, Al was again dressed in his familiar crushed green velvet coat, lace and all. Black boots with buckles scuffed the dirt, and he jauntily sported an obsidian walking cane and a matching tall hat. Dark round glasses protected his eyes, but I could tell it wasn’t enough, as his expression was pained and the sun seemed to be picking away at our auras as we stood. The sun was one of the reasons the demons hid underground in vast caverns overlain with the illusion of the outside. The fact that structures tended to fall apart on the surface was another.

It was odd seeing Al, with his top hat and elegant grace, poking about with the tip of his cane as he found evidence of other demons. "No surface demons," I said. The hot air hurt my chest.

"The sun feels worse today." Al crouched to turn over a rock that someone had shifted.

I winced as the wind whipped my toga and tiny pinpricks of rock hit my bare legs. All around me were the telltale signs of other demons: a footprint here, a scuff there-an oval impression in the dust that looked like the bottom of Newt’s staff. They’d been here, seen the damage, incidentally obliterating the evidence that Ku’Sox might have been here earlier to make the leak in my line worse. I sort of knew how the I.S. felt.

Al slowly exhaled as he stood, his expression blank as he looked out over the dry riverbed to the scrub and trees. His fingers fumbled in a tiny pocket, and he sniffed a pinch of brimstone. "It’s a damn ugly place for a ley line."

"I wasn’t planning on making one to begin with," I said, then shivered when a wave of ever-after coated me, falling away to show he’d changed me out my toga for head-to-toe black leather. No bra or panties, but at least the gritty wind wasn’t scouring me like the sun was stripping my aura, and this outfit, unlike most, fitted me, not Ceri.

Oh God, Ceri. I was no closer to getting them back than when I’d got here.

Unaware of my thoughts, Al shoved a prissy pink-and-white lace parasol at me. "Here."

The frail thing clashed with the leather, but immediately I felt a sense of relief in its shadow. I’d seen Ku’Sox. He knew I was aware of what he’d done. He’d make his demands soon enough, and until then, I had to believe that Ceri and Lucy were okay. "Thanks," I said as I looked at the stack of rubble. "Shouldn’t the line be over the rocks? That’s where I came in."

Al began picking his way to my ley line, his cane knocking jagged chunks of rock from his path. "Lines drift," he said, his head down. "Move. They’re like magnets repelling each other. They will shift across continents given enough time and impetus. They only appear to be stationary because they’ve balanced with each other ages ago. Yours here . . ." Al sniffed in consideration. "It likely won’t move much anymore. Has it always been this size?"

I nodded as I came even with him and faced the barely visible shimmer in the air. The ley line the university was built on was wide enough that you could drive a team of horses down it for a quarter mile. The one in my graveyard was about four feet wide and twenty feet long, an admittedly small line. Mine here was about the same, maybe a little longer.

Al pressed his lips together, puffing his air out as he gazed at seemingly nothing, but he was probably looking at my line with his second sight. "You got out fast. The longer it takes, the wider the wound."

"Really?" So a small line was a good thing, which made me wonder who made the line in my graveyard. Then I wondered who had taken forever to get out of the one at the university. Al maybe?

Walking the length of the shimmer in the air, Al turned and strolled back, the line a haze between us. "A line this size can’t be leaking this much on its own."

"It wasn’t when I left it." I cocked my hip, feeling naked without my usual shoulder bag.

Al’s focus landed on me. "Can you hear it?" he asked, and my lips puckered in distaste. "You’re not using your second sight," he added, and I shook my head, tucking a gritty strand of hair behind an ear. But at his dramatic prompting, I exhaled and opened my second sight.