Ever After (The Hollows #11)(96)
Author: Kim Harrison

It was lit, and between the shadowy coals and the slate spelling table was a hunched figure on the floor. "Mother pus bucket," Al groaned, throwing back the blanket he had been wrapped in to scowl at me. "I was asleep!" he yelled, his new black eyes glaring as he held his head. "What do you mean by asking me to jump you over here when I was asleep? The lines are all a bloody hell mess! You can’t jump without a gargoyle assist, or it bloody hell hurts!"

"Really? I had no idea," I said as I sat up, wishing my head would stop throbbing. At least he was healed, though, and I cautiously sat on the hearth across from him, recalling that weird batlike image he had had in his dream and wondering if he remembered it. He was in his robe, not surprising me at all. "Sorry," I said, as he felt his ribs and grimaced. "You okay?"

"Do I look okay?" he griped, and I couldn’t help my grin. "Why the hell are you laughing! You think this is funny?"

"No," I said, unable to stop smiling. "I’m just glad you’re okay."

He grumbled under his breath, groaning as he reached for a lump of dirt he then threw onto the fire. The stench of burnt amber grew stronger. "I’m assuming you have a reason to be here," he said, watching the fire, not me. "Besides wanting to see me in pain."

I scooted closer, wondering if the room was indeed smaller. There wasn’t the floor space that I remembered, but maybe the new door would account for it. "I need your help. Dali gave me until Friday to settle with Ku’Sox, but I think he’d rather kill me if he gets the chance."

"I can’t imagine why," he snarled, hunching into his blanket and looking miserable.

I took a breath. "I can prove Ku’Sox broke my line, but I need-"

He looked at me as my words cut off in guilt. Oh God. They were elven slavers. He wouldn’t help me. What was I doing here?

"What do you need . . . Rachel," he said suspiciously.

Licking my lips, I tugged my coat closer. It was unusually cold in here. "Ah, I can prove Ku’Sox broke the line by moving all the imbalance at once to the line in the garden and thereby exposing his curse. But I have to keep him off me until someone comes to look, and that won’t happen until I prove I can best him. And to do that, I need help."

Al didn’t shift, didn’t make a single indication that he heard me. "Black-souled student thinks she can just come anytime she wants," he grumped, reaching back to scratch his shoulders under his blanket. "Were you in my dream?"

"No," I said, and then when his black-eyed stare fell on me, I amended, "Yes. Al, I’ve got a workable plan. I need help."

He sighed, but if it was because I’d seen his dream or that I had a plan he was sure would fail, I didn’t know. "Damn blue butterflies," he whispered, watching the red sparks drift up the chimney. "They don’t mean anything. Are you hungry?"

What was it with men trying to feed me all the time? "No. Al-"

"I am," he said, interrupting me as he reached for a covered basket beside the hearth. It was tied with a checkered bow, and I imagined it was from Newt-hopefully on one of her good days. "I’ve not eaten in weeks, it feels like," he said as he undid the ribbon and looked inside.

"Al, I need your help."

"Oh." His expression fell. "I am not eating that. Rachel, this is foul. Come smell this."

"Al!"

Al stopped fussing with the basket, his head down. "I know you want to use my rings. You aren’t strong enough to overpower Ku’Sox alone. No one is, not even two demons together. Not three. Five, it took last time, and since only four walked away from the encounter, no one is willing to try again. Especially when there are bribes of mended demon babies with which to escape to the sun in."

"You know?" I said, my surprise quickly vanishing.

He eyed me as if embarrassed. "Of course. I was burned, not lobotomized. My wedding rings are not enough." Pulling them from a pocket, he pushed them around in his palm with a bare finger. "Even if you and I wore them and stood before Ku’Sox, they would not be enough."

I was starting to get mad. Why did I have to do this all by myself? "You’ve given up!"

A weary slump came over him. "Rachel . . . We made him to be better than us, able to crush an elf warlord on his own. My rings are not enough."

"But I know how to fix the line!" I protested, and he reached up to set his rings on the slate table beside him. "It’s not broken, just overloaded. Ku’Sox shoved all the tiny imbalances in your collective lines into mine, making them more than the sum of their energies. Bis and I separated Newt’s signature imbalance from that purple sludge and got it back into the line she made."

His eyes widened, and I stifled a shudder at the new blackness of them. "Interesting," he said, tossing another chunk of earth on the flames. "The loss is keyed to individual lines . . . and you separated one?" Settling himself deeper into the flagstones, he seemed to find strength with the fire behind him. "Is this why Newt’s room are not shrinking anymore?"

"Probably," I said, wondering if there was a direct connection between the imbalance, the leak, and the missing mass. If so, she wasn’t going to like my dumping the imbalance into her line. "That’s why Ku’Sox took Bis. But I don’t need Bis to move the entire ball of sludge to Newt’s line and expose Ku’Sox’s curse."

Al’s expression twisted. "Whereupon he will descend upon you and-"

"Turn me into a dark spot on the ever-after floor. Yeah," I said, picking at a seam in the floor. "I was hoping that once I proved he did it that maybe some of you might . . . I don’t know . . . help me maybe!" I shouted, frustrated.

Chuckling, Al resettled himself. "I would, but it will take at least five, not counting you because you don’t know squat."

I would have argued with him, but he was right. "Quen will stand with us. And Trent, if we can get him free."

Al stiffened at Trent’s name. "Elf magic might prevail where demon can’t," he admitted grudgingly. "As much as I’m loath to admit it, Trent would be the better choice." He poked at the fire to send up a flurry of copper-colored sparks. "He’s a savage beast with a strong bond to his trickster goddess." His eyes met mine in warning. "Powerful, but chaotic. Untrustworthy."

It wasn’t a ringing endorsement, but surprisingly promising, and I eyed him from around my snarling hair. "Are you saying that elf magic is more powerful than demon?"

"I would never admit that," he said with a guffaw. "But Ku’Sox knows demon magic. Elf magic, from the old wars? Not so much."