Trent fidgeted as we waited for both our drinks and David, the Were currently at Cormel’s emergency city meeting. They’d started about an hour before sunrise, continuing as the expected suncides became reality. Trent hadn’t been invited, but I’d convinced the shocked man that crashing the meeting was a bad idea. David could bring back the real dirt, and Cormel wouldn’t dare stuff the alpha Were in a hole to be forgotten—not as he would Trent. And whereas yesterday I might have gotten mopey about how Trent had been kicked out of his own meeting, now it only made me mad. I loved him, damn it. And everyone else, demons included, would have to get over it.
But the insecurity remained.
Grimacing, Ivy waved Jenks off as his dust blanked the screen, and I leaned forward to hear. Most of the people here were watching something similar on their various devices, and the unending circle of the same bad news of suncides and interviews was making me nauseated.
“. . . are asked to keep 911 calls to life-threatening emergencies,” the professional woman said as she stood outside Cincinnati’s main city building. “Suncides will receive faster responses using the number at the bottom of the screen.” She took a breath, eyes flicking past the camera to track the sound of a passing siren. “Impromptu meetings across the U.S. in major population centers continue to search for ways to cope and hopefully stem the unprecedented numbers of vampiric suncides linked to soul reunions.”
I winced as the woman was replaced by a shot of Edden, David, and Mrs. Sarong going into the very same building, their heads down to avoid the press. It was dark, clearly before sunrise, and I gave Trent’s hand a squeeze under the table.
“But it’s here in our own Cincinnati that all are watching, as former U.S. president Rynn Cormel meets with various members of the scientific and religious community who flew in earlier today from all points with the intent of developing an end solution to this tragedy.”
My hand slipped from Trent’s as he stood. “Excuse me,” he said, eyes down. “I think our drinks are up. Rachel, you sure you don’t want a muffin or something?”
I shook my head. It was too early to eat.
“Living vampires are demanding a removal of the free-roaming undead souls that some are beginning to refer to as surface demons in the wake of the destruction they cause. Experts are advising the living to check on their undead and protect them from unnecessary surface travel. If a loved one does find their soul, they’re advised not to leave them unattended.”
Jenks’s wings clattered, and I followed his gaze to Trent weaving his way to the pickup counter. The coffee wasn’t up. He just didn’t want to hear any more, depressed that his voice was being ignored and that he was forced to work from secondhand information.
Jenks silently flew after him, startling the man when he landed on his shoulder. Ivy sighed and closed her laptop. Eyes red-rimmed from fatigue, she leaned back into her chair and nursed her sweet coffee. “The news is circling now,” she said softly. “Nothing new.”
Circling like the thoughts of the undead, I mused, brow furrowed when I remembered that’s how mystics saw them—little lights in the dark that never changed. “You look tired,” I said, and her eyes flicked to me.
“Didn’t get much sleep. Did you stop at the church on your way in?”
My gaze dropped. “No, I’m afraid to.” I wanted to know if she still had her soul bottle. I hadn’t seen it, but it was small enough to easily fit in a pocket. “How’s Nina?”
“Good.” Her eyes looked up, and a tiny thrill of emotion spilled through me at the love in her eyes for Nina, the relief. “She’s good. She . . . helped me yesterday when I thought Cormel had you. Grounded me. She’s with my folks right now. I’m really worried about my mom.”
Helped? I thought, imagining Ivy freaking out, her frantic terror disguised as planning a foolhardy rescue. Nina had probably had to take charge to keep Ivy from doing something stupid, such as confronting Cormel in person. Oh, wait. That’s just what I’d done. But it had probably proved to Nina that her love for Ivy was stronger than her need for Felix, and I smiled because something good had come of it. Things would be better now.
“My mother is terrified,” Ivy whispered, her hands laced about her cup. “Torn. She wants her soul. Wants a way out even if it kills her.”
“I’m sorry.”
Jaw clenched, Ivy swung her hair from her eyes and looked out the plate-glass windows at nothing. “This is hell, you know? An entire people cursed. What did we do to deserve this?”
I knew the demons had begun the vampires, probably as a cruel answer to a wish made in fear that grew like a disease, taking the guilty and the innocent alike. I didn’t say anything, and the silence stretched. It felt like it was ending—not just because of the sirens and quiet desperation going on outside the security of the coffeehouse. Just . . . everything. “Ivy . . .”
“I know.” She took a sip of cooling coffee, not looking at me. “I feel it, too. I wanted it to last forever, but things change. People change.”
She was fingering the bracelet that Nina had given her, and I felt proud of her. “Not everything,” I said, reluctant to let her think that after one night at Trent’s I was abandoning her, the church, Jenks . . . One night? Try a couple dozen.
Smiling faintly she shrugged, barely shifting her shoulders. “How we react to things has. Are you happy when you’re with Trent?”
I nodded, not surprised by her question.
“I would have called you a liar if you had said anything else.” Sighing, she shifted her cup out of Jenks’s dust when the pixy came back with a tiny mug. Trent was still at the counter, sprinkling cinnamon into an open cup.
“I should’ve come back last night,” I said.
Jenks slurped his hot coffee. “There was no reason to. Besides, Ivy and Nina—”
“Shut up, Jenks,” Ivy said, a faint blush on her cheeks, but her eyes were earnest as she waved the giggling pixy out from between us. “Sometimes I think Jenks and I stuck with this as long as we did because we were afraid you wouldn’t find someone else who could survive you.”
Swearing at his spilled coffee, Jenks stopped his gyrating and dropped down. Depressed, I put my head on the table, forehead on my crossed arms. Someone who could survive me. Maybe if I didn’t keep putting him in life-threatening places.
“You know what I’d like to do once the church is fixed?” Jenks said. “Travel.”
“To the Arizona desert?” I said, breath coming back warm and stale from the tabletop.
Ivy chuckled. “In your red boots and hat?” she teased, and I pulled my head up to see Jenks hovering, his dust red in embarrassment.
“It’s not that,” he protested, almost belligerent. “I could travel, you know.”
I picked at a small dent in the table. “I think you should.”
“Who’d watch your back?” The pixy snorted, turning to Trent coming back with three steaming cups. “Cookie bits over there? Just ’cause you’re not in the church doesn’t mean you’re not out there doing dumb things.”
“Thanks, Jenks,” I said, smiling at Trent as he carefully set the hot coffee down.
“Here you go, Rachel,” he said, pushing the one with the cinnamon to me before sitting down with his own straight black. “What did I miss?”
His voice was heavy with uncertainty, and I eagerly took a sip, hoping someone else would answer him. Jenks was on the edge of Ivy’s laptop, his ankle crossing one knee to mimic Trent. Lips smacking, he took a long draft of his own brew. “I was just telling Rache how we should all move out to Arizona.”
Trent relaxed, eyeing Ivy as she succinctly sipped her coffee with deliberate slowness. “Arizona, eh? Too hot for horses. I could go for somewhere else, though.”
Surprised, I swallowed the bitter, nutty brew. “You’d move? Seriously?”
Uncomfortable, Trent eased back in his chair. “Sure, why not?” His eyes roved over nothing. “It might be nice to start again without my father’s legacy hanging over me.” He carefully sipped. “Anywhere else looks real good to me right now.”
Jenks rose up, ankle still on his knee. “Meeting must be over. Al is here.”
I leaned past Trent to see the back of the store. Al was indeed there in his forties suit, shaking off the last of the ley line as he stood in an elaborately painted circle next to the door to the back. My eyebrows rose as I realized it was a jump-in/-out circle, not so much having any magical power on its own, but simply a designated space to keep clear of boxes and merchandise for demons to come and go as they would.
My eyes flicked to Mark as Al strode to the order counter. Mark, what have you gotten yourself into, inviting demons into your coffeehouse?
Trent stood. “I’ll get a chair,” he said, eyeing the nearly full establishment. Al’s presence had been noted, and people were gathering their things and making a beeline for the door.
“Demon grande, extra hot!” the barista sang out, and Mark snagged it before it got to the pickup window, handing it to Al himself with a smile that was too relaxed for my liking.
Demon grande? The barista had put a pump of raspberry in it and a sprinkle of cinnamon.
Ivy didn’t move from her slouch as Al came to our table, standing over it and looking at me in disgust. His red goat-slitted eyes shifted to Trent as the man set a chair at the open end of the table, and I stiffened as Al walked behind me. But it wasn’t the new chair he wanted, and he shoved the chair away with his foot, turning to the nearest table and glaring at the patrons until they took their things and scattered. Still silent, he moved the new table into ours so hard that Jenks rose up, swearing and shaking hot coffee from his wing.
Motions expansive, Al swung a chair to sit at the head of the now-longer table. I was starting to wonder why he was here. He didn’t look happy.
Trent sat back down across from me and moved his coffee closer. “How did the meeting go?” he asked pleasantly.
“As expected,” Al growled.
“I didn’t know you were there.” I stretched my foot out to find Trent’s. I knew he hated getting this secondhand, and from Al no less. Feeling it, Trent smiled, but it was tense and vanished fast.
Al wiped his mouth, exhaling long as he came up from his first gulp of coffee. “I was the representative from the demon faction,” he said, unable to hide his pleasure at being important and included. “Landon is devious . . . as are most elves. The vampires should be allowed to die; they’re idiots, believing in fairy tales and dreams when they know they’re damned forever.”
I curled my hand around my cup to warm my fingers. “I take it that it didn’t go well.”
Al looked away as if peeved. “Landon’s solution is to unbalance the lines—”
“What!” I exclaimed. “Does he have any idea what that can do? I spent an entire night balancing them and I am not doing it again!”
“Wait for the rest,” Al grumbled, and I sat back down, not even realizing I’d stood. Jenks was laughing at me and Ivy was clearly amused, but I was pissed. I wasn’t going to fix them again!
“His plan is to unbalance the lines, drain the ever-after to nothing, and use the energy of the ever-after’s collapse to reinstate the Arizona lines.”
I almost stood up again, jerking back into my seat when Ivy grabbed my arm. “Is he crazy?” I contented myself with that.
“Rachel,” Ivy murmured. “You’re scaring people.”
Al hunched at the table, looking depressed, not outraged. “So of course the demons should be happy, happy and go along with it and help, seeing that if there is no ever-after, there’s no way to banish us again,” he said sarcastically. “Just because the vampires are lobbying for the Darwin award doesn’t mean we are.”
Trent’s finger tapped the table in thought. “Setting aside the obvious downside to the end of magic, how would ending the ever-after solve the problem of the undead souls? Wouldn’t destroying the ever-after ensure they remain in reality?”
“Not necessarily.” Al laced his hands around his coffee. “The undead souls are still tied to the ever-after through the original curse. If the ever-after falls, they cease to exist. Problem solved, according to the elves. They’re not admitting the possibility that demons will fail to exist as well. Apart from you, Rachel.” His mood became introspective. “And all those Rosewood babies,” he drawled. “How are they doing, the little tykes?”
I figured he knew they weren’t dead, but I wasn’t going to tell him. Ivy’s eyes looked haunted as Al tugged the sleeves of his coat, frowning as if missing his usual lace. “Leave it to the elves to muck up a perfectly balanced curse,” he said. “I never liked the cruel savagery of extending some sucker’s life by separating the soul from the consciousness. To make that separation last from this existence to the next was too cruel for a demon, hence storing them in the ever-after, but an elf has no problem with it.” Sneering at Trent over his cup, he took a sip. “Your race is monstrous.”
Trent took a breath to protest, but I waved my hands for attention. “Wait, wait, wait,” I said. “Next existence? You mean like heaven? Reincarnation? Seriously?” I looked over everyone. “You want to share with the class?”
Al sucked on his teeth, the sharp sound like a knife from a sheath. “How the hell should I know what comes next, if anything? I wasn’t the one pioneering the technology. But I do know that if the undead souls have nowhere to shelter until the body truly dies and frees the consciousness, their souls will move on to the next plane, or whatever, without their consciousness. Even Newt doesn’t know what happens after that line is crossed, but until now everyone went with a soul and consciousness together.” He took a sip of coffee. “Cursed or no.”