Ever After (The Hollows #11)(76)
Author: Kim Harrison

Quen’s guilty frown when I turned back around stopped me cold. "What?" I said flatly, and he winced. Jenks clattered his wings aggressively, coming to hover beside me. Together we made a united front, Ellasbeth’s continued efforts to get Lucy to say mama an ugly backdrop.

Grimacing, Quen crouched with Ray, setting her on the floor, and gruffly saying, "Go say hi to your sister." Ray leaned forward into a crawl for the hallway, hesitating to study the feel of the circle I’d gouged out of the linoleum before crossing it.

"Ray!" Lucy crowed, and the little girl’s feet disappeared with a gurgling giggle.

My faint smile faded as Quen rose, his eyes going to the scorch marks, then the ley line charms sitting next to the dusty box. "What aren’t you telling us?" I demanded, and he clasped his hands before him.

"How badly do you need that particular pair of rings?"

Jenks rose up with a sound of disgust, and I threw the towel with the glass shards away, letting the cabinet door slam. "Pretty bad," I said tightly. "Why?" I couldn’t tell if his grimace was because of the rings or because Ellasbeth was now crying at the girls’ enthusiastic reunion.

"Ah, the family that promised their use won’t give them to us now that Trent is missing."

Great. That’s just freaking great.

Ellasbeth’s soft, one-sided tearful conversation filtered in from the living room as Quen reached for a chair and sat down. It was unusual, but he was still recovering from the beating he’d taken Monday morning. He’d be on the cusp of having his aura back at full strength tomorrow. It sat sour in me that I’d be risking Ray growing up with no parent at all, but I needed someone to watch my back, and Quen would be shamed if I didn’t ask him.

"I’ll talk to them again," Quen said, clearly embarrassed. "Unless you want a different pair?"

I frowned. The only other pair that had any chance of making a strong enough connection between elf and demon was a pair that touted itself to be demon slavers. "I don’t know how much it’s going to matter," I said, frustrated as I started tidying, dropping my dad’s old charms into the box one by one. "I’m having a hard time getting anything to reinvoke." Friday. I had until Friday night. "What do you mean they won’t let me use their stupid rings?" I blurted suddenly, ticked. "Don’t they know this is for the good of all elfkind!" Quen’s eye twitched at Ellasbeth’s ongoing passive-aggressive conversation with the girls aimed at us, not them. "Don’t you have some kind of authority in his absence? I can probably move the imbalance, but without some power to back it up, I’m going to get smeared into a dark stain on an ever-after rock before any other demon can come out to verify Ku’Sox was behind it!"

Quen lifted a hand and let it fall, clearly at a loss. Jenks just shook his head and darted out of the room, his dust a bright silver. Yelling was getting me nowhere, and tired, I leaned back against the sink. Ivy would be back tonight. Maybe we could just go steal the damn rings.

Rex came in to curve around my ankles, and I ran a hand over my face.

"Can’t you simply explain to the demons what Ku’Sox is doing?" Quen said. "They aren’t stupid. Surely one of them can spot you. Al maybe?"

I never thought I’d ever see the day he would recommend a demon help me, and I smiled. It was short-lived, though. "No," I said flatly. "They’re afraid down to the last one, and I’m not going to count on Al’s aura being full strength in time." Quen’s eyebrows rose, and I wiped my hands and leaned into the center counter. "They know what Ku’Sox is up to, better than I do. But the Rosewood babies Nick stole are Ku’Sox’s bribes, life rafts for the demons who back him. They’ll take a sure risk-free bet that might get them permanently in reality over standing up to Ku’Sox and possibly losing everything."

I hesitated, watching Rex make a slow, nonchalant way to the other side of the kitchen, her tail up and whiskerless face searching. In a fumbling, unbalanced jump from her lack of whiskers, Rex leaped onto the counter by the sink. I smoothly lifted her and set her back on the floor. The tip of the cat’s tail twitched in displeasure as she stared up at the chrysalis. "I have to empty the line of the imbalances and survive long enough for the other demons to agree he broke it. Ku’Sox is stronger than me. Stronger than Newt. Really smart, huh? Making a child that no one can control?"

Quen exhaled in thought, and my stomach knotted. There were too many ifs. Too many maybes. I turned to the cupboard to get something to cover the chrysalis with. "If they don’t give me the rings, I’m just going to go steal them."

The scrape of the glass going over the chrysalis was loud, and the silence grew as the pixies sang to Lucy and Ray, captivating them-and getting Ellasbeth to finally shut up. On a sudden impulse, I twisted Trent’s pinkie ring off and shoved it under the glass with the chrysalis. Two days. Two freaking days. I didn’t have the time to steal some dumb rings.

Jenks darted in, wincing at his offspring’s noise. "You’re overthinking this," the pixy said as he came to rest on Ivy’s monitor where he could see the kitchen and a slice of the living room, too. "I say you get the rings, reinvoke them, forget the line, and just pop over to Ku’Sox’s lair so you and Trent can kill the sucker."

"That’s what Trent wants," I said, and Quen jerked his head up, clearly alarmed.

"Ah, Rachel?" the older man said, and I raised a hand.

"Relax, I’m not going to try to kill Ku’Sox," I said, though part of me cried out for revenge. A smarter bruised and battered part of me knew better. "I’m going to need your help, though, to hold off Ku’Sox after moving the imbalance. Will you be up for it Friday night?"

Friday night. Why did I always have to cut these things so close?

"Just try to do this without me," he grumbled.

Clearly unsure, Jenks dusted a dull gold, his wings blurring to nothing as he stood on the monitor. "Then that’s the plan," I said, watching Rex pad out of the kitchen. "QED. Quite Easily Done." Or Quite Easily Dead, as my dad used to say.

It wasn’t a great plan, but it was a plan, and the depressed silence in the kitchen grew until Ellasbeth began shouting at the pixies to get out. They were singing now, and Lucy was joining in, shrieking just for the hell of it. The woman needed help, but I wasn’t going to go in there. Neither was Quen by the look of it, wincing from the shrill voices raised in rhyme and mayhem. Unable to take it anymore, Rex slunk past the kitchen, probably on her way to hide under my bed. Chaos. My life was chaos.

"So I guess the first thing would be to get the rings, preferably without Nick knowing?"