Pale Demon (The Hollows #9)(79)
Author: Kim Harrison

Newt didn’t say anything, kneeling on the hearth and running her fingers through the fire as if it were a kitten’s fur. Al’s slippers shifted a hair’s breadth, and I realized he was more than a little nervous. At the sound of the soft scuffing, Newt glanced at him, a sly look on her face as she smiled with her black eyes. My gut hurt as a second haze of ever-after sifted over her, leaving her looking as she had when she slid into Al’s library and sucker-kicked me. "You’re sweet," she said as her intent expression turned to me and I shivered. "Don’t you want your marshmallow?"

"I just want to go back," I said, and then I stiffened when she got to her feet with a boneless grace, coming to sit on the couch, angling herself so her knees almost touched mine.

"And back you will go," she said, her hand touching my hair.

"If the ever-after is shrinking, maybe she should stay here," Al said, and I stiffened. Newt saw my anger, and my hair slipped from her hand.

"I proved I can hold my own against Ku’Sox," I said. "Besides, Pierce is there in case I do something really stupid. You owe me this chance. If I can’t survive the next twenty-four hours, then I’ll never survive here."

Newt’s thin eyebrows were raised in question. She saw my scrying mirror, and I stiffened when she took it from me. "Such a pretty little triangle," she said as she gazed at her hazy reflection in my mirror, then shifted her appearance to look like me. "Al wants to kill Pierce," she said, tucking a strand of her now curly red hair behind an ear, making me shudder. "But he can’t leave Rachel alone and vulnerable in the sun. And Pierce"-she handed my mirror to me-"well, he is going to destroy you whether he wants to or not. Scheming, scheming. Such little men’s desires flow around you."

It was more than a bit disturbing to see myself dressed in Newt’s clothes. This was one of her bad days, I think. "Pierce doesn’t want to kill me," I said, my thoughts flashing back to our night under the earth, then his sullen temper when I’d saved Al. Maybe he’d forgive me if I told him I’d almost killed Al, too. "He had a moment of pique, is all. He’ll get over it."

She was nodding, looking like me as she sat on the couch. "They all get over it, don’t they? And then he’ll destroy your hope, kill your soul. He won’t even know what he’s doing until it’s too late. I can tell the future because my days are always the same." I stiffened as she touched my hair again, head cocked as she studied it, feeling it between her fingers that looked like mine, right down to the wooden pinkie ring and the chipped red nail polish. "Between you and me, you’d be better off with both of them dead," she finished.

Al cleared his throat. Newt’s gaze shifted to him and she made a soft noise. "Al, you are a fool," she said as a sheet of black ever-after coated her and she turned back into her usual androgynous self. "You might have more than two curses to rub together if you didn’t allow both your familiar and your student to run about in the sun, plotting against you."

"Then she should stay, yes?" he said, and she threw her head back and laughed.

"No. Rachel goes back," she said, and I sagged a little in relief. "There’s more than one bet to be settled tomorrow, and they made me the referee again. They never let me bet anymore. Not since I won Minias. Where is he, anyway? Oh, that’s right." She eyed me speculatively. "I killed him."

Great. Newt was a demon bookie on top of everything else. "What are my odds of getting my shunning permanently revoked?" I asked, having to know.

Newt smiled and handed me my scrying mirror. "You’re going to lose because of Pierce. Didn’t you hear me? Or do you forget things, too?"

I couldn’t answer, trying to find enough air to breathe. Do I have a shot at this or not?

"That’s my girl," she said, her eyes holding a shared pain as she saw my confusion. "Al, where are you going to put her? Not in your room. She’d pull a line through you and kill you when you hog the blankets. I’ll take the waif in. I promise I’ll bring this one up properly."

Newt patted the six-inch space beside her thigh, and my face became cold. Oh God. Anything but that.

Al stood, tugging the tie on his robe tighter. "I have everything under control."

Newt waved a thin hand in dismissal. "And that’s why she was arcing a line through you, yes?" she said, then vanished. The seat cushion rose slowly, and the fire flared as new air was sucked down the chimney to replace her mass.

I forced my teeth to unclench, and I shifted my grip on my mirror. "Now, Al?" I prompted, and Al slumped back in his chair again.

"Al?" I said again, louder, and he glanced at me, his fingers searching the chair cushion until he found a little tin of his Brimstone. Opening it, he sniffed a pinch up each nostril, his head going back as he closed his eyes and sighed. Great, now I was going to set the Brimstone dogs off at the coven’s meeting tomorrow.

"You do like doing things the hard way," he said, eyes still closed.

"You said you’d send me back," I warned him, and his head came down, his eyes looking a little redder than usual.

"I am, I am," he said, but he was just sitting there, pinching the bridge of his nose. He did that only when I really screwed up. Like the time I used foxglove instead of peppermint, and the curse I was working on turned his ink into stone. "I don’t know if I should hope you win your bet or lose," he finally said.

"Huh," I said. "I thought you wanted me to lose."

"I do," he said, "but if you’re in reality, it will take longer for anyone to figure out that you were the one who made the hole in the fabric of time. Nice going, Rachel."

Worry clenched my chest, and I set my mirror across my knees. "Why are you assuming it was me? Maybe it was Ku’Sox. He did make the arch fall down. I didn’t do anything that you didn’t do when you made a ley line."

But Al was shaking his head. Sighing heavily, he let go of his nose. "I made my ley line while jumping from the ever-after to reality. You made yours jumping from reality to reality. It’s leaking."

I licked my lips. "I guess the collective is going to be pissed, huh?"

His bark of laughter startled me, and I tried to hide my jump. "Yes, the collective is going to be pissed. I just hope I can find out how to fix it before they listen to Newt and realize she’s right."

"U-uh…," I stammered, and Al frowned at me.

"U-uh…," he mocked, then reached beneath his chair to the bundle that hadn’t been there a moment ago. "Here. You’re going to need this for your hanging tomorrow."