The Witch With No Name (The Hollows #13)(66)
Author: Kim Harrison

“What curse?” I said, feeling as if I was on the brink of a precipice.

Al snapped the bag shut and lifted it easily. “Not break exactly, but when they modified it to force the surface demons to reality, they created a loophole.” He spun to his fire and took the iron, rapping the ash from it. “I’m leaving now. You can have the tapestry. I never liked that thing anyway.”

My heart thudded. “Al, wait!” I called out, but with a tweak on my awareness, he vanished in a curl of black-tainted ever-after.

Bis shifted his wings, and the room abruptly seemed a lot colder. I turned to Trent at his soft scuffing of feet. He had sat down, sinking into Al’s simple three-legged stool, elbow on the table and head in his hand as his thumb ran over a tiny scratch in the surface. I’d seen Al like that more than once. The hatred between the elves and the demons went far deeper than I’d thought. “Trent? What happened?”

He looked up, a hint of the fear of the unknown in the back of his gaze. “It must have taken the dewar working in concert with a good portion of the enclave,” he said, and then his focus sharpened on me. “That’s what you felt in your mom’s spelling room. The unbinding spell recognized you as a demon, and when it couldn’t find the curse keeping you in the ever-after, it just kept trying to take something, anything. The demons figured out what was going on, and now they’re free.”

My lips parted. Free? As in reality?

Suddenly I got it—the entire mess. Landon had made a huge error. He’d freed the surface demons to get rid of the undead, but once they walked into the sun—which I was sure they would—it’d be the demons who’d replace them as the rule makers and breakers, not the elves.

Grimacing, I reached for Mr. Fish. I didn’t think Al was coming back. “We should go,” I said, bending to pick up my bag. There was nothing here. Everything that had meant anything had been taken, held in that little carpetbag.

“Cincinnati?” Bis spread his wings in anticipation. “But you’re supposed to be dead.”

Trent edged from the softly mewling tapestry. “It doesn’t matter now.”

No, it didn’t matter. And I was not going to help Landon save the world. He’d made his choice, and it wasn’t my responsibility.

But as I felt Bis’s aura slip around us, I had a bad feeling I was going to have to anyway.

Chapter 15

The steeple was a dark slash against the underside of the clouds, red with the reflected light of the Hollows. Stray gleams of streetlight eked through the unmoving trees, making lumps and shadows in the graveyard. There was no friendly glow from the back porch. There was no back porch at all, and I held Mr. Fish carefully as my steps through the damp, unmowed grass slowed and the extent of the damage became evident.

Trent steadied me as I stepped over the low stone wall separating the garden from the graveyard. His hand was warm on my elbow, and I leaned into him, trying to tell him with my touch that I didn’t believe what Al had said. He’s not using me, I thought, but the uglier part of me added, This might not have happened if you’d walked away six months ago. I slowed, pulling away from him as the heartache of my church fell on me.

The rank, acidic scent of things that shouldn’t be burned was choking. The kitchen and back living room were gone; only the broken remains of what wouldn’t burn were left to show there’d ever been anything there. What was probably the stove and the fridge poked through what was left of the roof, all of it well below the original floor and filling the crawl space. Gutter work, twisted from the heat, was the most recognizable thing.

The stones of the original church were black and glistening from the soot and heat. Plywood had already been fixed over the open hallway, and it looked oddly high up from the ground without a porch to ground it. It was worse than seeing it on TV—cold, dark, and sad with chunks of our lives out of place and hardly recognizable.

“I’m sorry,” Bis said, and I touched his feet, ignoring the lump in my throat as I pushed forward. My pace faltered when the ground became squishy from the water used to put out the fire. My coffeemaker: gone. The mug with the rainbows on it: gone. My spelling books: gone.

“There’s Jenks,” Trent said in relief, and somehow I smiled at the bright trail of sparkles arrowing down from the belfry.

Bis’s wings shushed against my head, and my smile became real as I continued my list of don’t-haves: no funerals, no songs of blood and daisies, no feeling guilty for surviving because I had fled. “Jenks!” I called as he circled, his wings a slow hum of indecision as he tried to read my mood. “Wow, they made a mess. You okay?”

“Hell yes!” Clearly relieved, he dropped down to Trent’s shoulder since Bis was on mine. “You’re lucky I’m not human size or I’d give you a smack,” he said, and Trent hid a grin. “Where’ve you been? Eww, the ever-after,” the pixy said, answering his own question. “Is that where you ditched the mystics? Your aura looks great. The demons are here. In reality. Why by Tink’s little pink dildo did you let them out?”

“I didn’t,” I said, and Jenks looked at Trent, the shock on his angular features lit from his own dust.

“It was Landon.” Trent grimaced at his shoes, now three inches deep in the mud that had once been my backyard. “He made a mistake.” He took my hand, and I gave it a squeeze. His eyes held a thread of heartache, a need to talk. This wasn’t a mistake. Al was bitter and jealous, unable to look past his own hurt, and Trent loved me. But even I knew I wouldn’t be able to help him reach his goal. His goal of elf supremacy? God, I wasn’t going to do this right now.

Jenks’s wings brightened to a hot silver. “Landon? Figures.”

I shivered when a drop of water from the big tree landed on my back. The bark was singed, and I hoped the fire hadn’t killed the tree outright. “Apparently, if you engineer a curse loophole big enough to allow shambling zombies/surface demons through, real demons can follow.” I picked my way through the mud, both wanting and dreading to see what was left.

Jenks’s wings clattered. “Ah, you have to go in around the front if you want to go in. I wouldn’t. It’s pretty bad. They hosed everything down.”

Nice. How many times is my church going to be trashed this week?

Jenks winced, arms over his chest. “Cleaning crew comes Wednesday. I would’ve had them sooner, but the building inspector has to give it an all clear.”