My teeth clenched as I step-hopped to the stairs, trying to decide how to get up them. Ellasbeth looked awful, not just tired from dealing with the stress of what was probably four hundred demons showing up on her doorstep, but frightened now that magic was gone.
“You need to do something about Landon, too,” she said, taking Lucy back when Trent saw me balk at the stairs. “He’s been on the news, talking to everyone with a mic. He’s trying to put a spin on this to blame Rachel.”
“Me!” I barked as Trent cupped a hand around my free elbow to half lift me up a step.
Ellasbeth looked at me, her words hesitant as she took in the bandages and blood. Not all of it was mine. Most of it wasn’t mine, actually, and that somehow made it worse. “Ah, no one believes,” she said. “But you need to do something, Trent. He’s blaming you, too.”
“I’ll get right on it,” he said wearily, and she scowled, thinking she was being put off, but I honestly didn’t know what she expected him to do. According to the news, anti-Landon sentiment was growing among the elves as they demanded answers and he kept blaming me. Even the elves had lost their magic. Either the Goddess was withholding her strength, or the elves needed the lines, too.
And yet I had blown down everyone in the square using mystics. Hurray, me. I snuck a glance at Al and Newt, glad they both seemed to be ignoring it. Newt’s cheerful attitude in the face of the-end-of-all-magic wasn’t giving me any warm fuzzies, though.
“Sa’han, Dali is waiting for you in your office, and Cormel would like to speak with you at his convenience,” Quen said.
Ray reached out, and Trent took her, leaving me to handle the next step alone. “In my office, eh?” Trent said, nodding for Quen to take my elbow since Ray had buried her face in his chest and wouldn’t let go. “Tell Cormel he’s going to have to come to me if he wants to chat.”
Newt and Al were waiting for us at the top of the stairs, and Quen scooped me up. I would’ve protested, but I’d slowed everyone else down to a crawl. “That was incredibly stupid,” Quen muttered, lagging behind as Trent took Ellasbeth’s elbow and turned her away from me. “You put yourself and Trent in incredible danger taking the stage like that.”
I frowned, not saying anything until we reached the top and I wiggled until he put me down. “I didn’t take the stage, they dragged me up there. And what would you have done if you saw Jon on a stage with a gun to his head and a dead body at his knees?”
Quen’s eye twitched as he looked past me to Ellasbeth, ushering Lucy inside, Trent and Ray following as Trent argued over something with the frazzled woman. “The same. Are you going to let me help you to Trent’s office?”
The helicopter was winding up again, lights flashing over us and making Al look more demonic than usual as he grabbed my arm. “I’ll help her,” he said, making me wonder at his motives.
“Both of you back off,” Newt said as she pushed Al away with a single finger on his chest. “I’m helping Rachel today. She saved my life, the poor dear.”
I was starting to feel like a dog’s tug toy, but I really wanted to sit down and didn’t care who helped me to Trent’s office. I leaned heavily on Newt as Al held the door and we shuffled inside. “Thanks,” I muttered, and Jenks swore at me as I tucked my hair behind my ear when the wind cut off. I’d forgotten he was there. Ellasbeth was already halfway down the hall, her voice twined with Lucy’s as the little girl tried to outdo her mother in volume.
“It was incredibly brave of you,” Newt said as we slowly paced after them. “Very brave, but incredibly stupid.”
Oh God, I thought my ribs were going to cave in, and my teeth clenched. “I wasn’t thinking about rescuing you. I just wanted them to stop killing people.”
“Obviously,” she cooed, and my steps became even slower as we got to the carpet in the hallway and I couldn’t shuffle anymore.
Trent was standing outside his office at his empty secretary’s desk. His expression was pinched with irritation. Ellasbeth didn’t look much better, and she almost had a cow when he handed Ray to Al. “Quen, I’d like you and Jon to find out where Ivy and Nina are. Apparently they never made it to the hospital.”
I spun, my sight dimming when I moved too fast. “What?”
Quen took Ray from Al and inclined his head. “Sa’han,” he said simply, turning to go.
The soft clatter of Jenks’s wings under my ear shocked through me. He’d been so quiet I’d forgotten he was there. “Hey, Quen,” he shouted. “How about dropping me off at the greenhouse? I want to check on my kids.”
“Crap, I’m sorry, Jenks,” I said.
“Don’t worry about it. Go sit somewhere,” Jenks said, a thin red dust spilling from him as he took to the air. “Your grinding teeth are giving me a headache.”
Ellasbeth and Lucy trailed along behind him, leaving Al and Newt staring expectantly at Trent and me. Trent took my elbow, his expression grim as he angled us to his office.
Ivy . . . “Trent, you don’t think Cormel has Ivy and Nina, do you?” I asked. “He wanted to see you.” See Trent, not me. The slight difference was the only thing keeping me here and not stealing one of Trent’s faster cars, bad leg or no.
“That’s what Quen is going to find out.”
It was going to be a long night, and I almost cried when we finally got to Trent’s office. Dali was in there, and I tried not to lean on Trent as he opened the door. The couch Trent had put in last week for short catnaps never looked better, and I gave Dali a swift nod, heart pounding as I moved as fast as I could and almost fell into it. Leather-scented air puffed up around me, and I thought it smelled wrong without a little vampire incense in with it.
“Dali,” Trent said cautiously, and the older, somewhat fat demon turned from where he’d been looking at the colorful saltwater fish in the wall tank behind Trent’s desk.
“How very elven,” Dali said softly, eyes flicking behind Trent to Al and Newt. “Keeping all his beautiful captives on display.”
The rims of Trent’s ears went red. “Everything in that tank was captive bred. Nothing came from the wild.”
Simpering, Dali settled himself behind the desk as if it was his. “That makes it worse.”
I could tell Dali sitting at his desk bothered Trent as he rubbed the side of his nose and went to feed the fish, his motions slow as he took a canister of food from a drawer inches from Dali’s foot. “Why are all of you here?” Trent said, his back to everyone as he sifted the food in and the rest of his fish came out of hiding.
Newt settled herself gracefully in the remaining chair, leaving Al and Trent standing. “Last in, last out,” she said cryptically. “Dali’s line was the last formed, so it was the last to go.”
I tried to shift my leg up off the floor, deciding to let it stay where it was when I almost passed out. “What about my line?” I asked when I could think again.
Al harrumphed, fists at the small of his back as he stood before the big vid screen showing an empty paddock at night. “Last line formed while fleeing the ever-after,” he explained. “Which might be why you are able to perform magic, and we can’t.”
“My line still exists?” I said, and Al shook his head. The lines were dead. There was no question as to how I could still do magic, and Dali wasn’t happy—even with Al’s lie as to why.
“Now, Gally,” Newt almost pouted, shifting her robe to hide the welts the makeshift cuffs at the square had given her. “You know that’s not why Rachel was able to do magic.”
“It wasn’t mystics,” Dali growled.
“I didn’t have any choice,” I said in a rush, seeing Al stiffen. “They’re dead. All the lines.”
Oh God, the lines were dead. I hadn’t seen Bis since yesterday. He must be in agony. Ivy was missing, probably in one of Cormel’s bedrooms awaiting my arrival so he could kill her and make me save her soul.
“I have to go,” I said, leg throbbing as I gripped the arm of the chair and lurched to a stand reaching for my crutch. “I have to get back to the church. Trent, I’m sorry, but I can’t do anything, and I need to help who I can.”
“Don’t be stupid.” Newt leaned across the space between us to yank my crutch from me and throw it at Dali. Trent reached to catch it before it hit his fish tank, but Dali was faster, and he glared at Newt as she settled back, pleased with herself for keeping me on the couch and getting Dali’s attention all at once. “Dali, you know as well as I that Rachel’s line went down first. The Goddess hates her. Rachel can do magic because the tiniest mote of mystics are looking to her, swarming her and creating a field she can tap into.” Newt’s eyes rose as she looked speculatively at me. “Filling her chi with wild magic . . .”
I sat back down, pinned to my chair by Dali’s fierce look.
“That is a lie!” Dali insisted, and Newt looked to the ceiling in false idleness.
“Or any she cared to share it with,” Newt finished. “She’s like a little ley line hot spot.”
“Enough!” Dali shouted. Trent inched in between me and the incensed demon, and Newt bobbed her foot like a twelve-year-old, delighted to rub the demon’s nose in something that would get me into trouble and distract Dali from realizing she’d once practiced elven magic, too.
“It’s the mystics, you decrepit old demon,” she said saucily. “The lines are dead, and the ever-after has until sunrise before the tides shift and it’s sucked out of existence, taking everything with it.”
Jenks . . . , I thought, looking at the door but helpless to walk to it. He couldn’t survive long without magic. Bis either. And the vampires. Their souls would have nowhere to go when they died their first death. Something was going to snap.
“You freed the familiars, yes?” Trent asked, and Dali’s expression went sour. “Your slaves? You’re abandoning them?” Trent exclaimed, outraged. “Your contract says you’ll keep them alive. You can’t just forget that because it’s difficult.”
“Difficult?” Dali snapped.
“And the undead souls,” I said aloud, thoughts on Ivy. She’d kill herself twice to keep her soul and consciousness together, even if she believed that would send her soul straight to hell.
Dali leaned forward over Trent’s desk, a thick finger pointing at me. “Failure to uphold any contract here isn’t my fault. I held to the undead curse as well as can be expected.” Lip curled back to show his teeth, he glared at Trent. “You and your species are to blame for the vampires’ soul destruction, not me.”
Soul destruction? I wondered, then pounced on that because it seemed to distress Dali the most. “You promised the first undead that his soul would be waiting, didn’t you? That promise falls to all who followed him. And now you can’t fulfill it.”
“This is not my fault!” Dali shouted, and the fish behind him dashed into hiding.
“You oversaw the curse,” Newt said sourly.
“This is intolerable,” Trent said, beginning to pace. “An entire population of living, breathing people trapped in the ever-after to die?”
Dali laughed, the bitter sound chilling. “Funny. That’s what you had intended for us.”
Trent spun, his anger slipping from his iron-clad control. “It was your idea first.”
Al tugged his suit coat straight. “Because you made slaves of us and warped our children so far from us they were as imbeciles.”
“Hey!” I exclaimed, not wanting to be counted as an idiot from birth. No, I could prove that all on my own.
“Boys and girls,” Newt soothed, her pleasant expression faltering when she noticed a bruise in the shape of a handprint on her arm. “We, ah, have all suffered, and though we clearly cannot forget, can we at least strive to forgive each other such that we can . . . survive?”
Trent turned his back on us, frustrated. “There’s nothing to move forward to,” he said as he looked at his hands to estimate their shaking. “No magic to move forward with. They didn’t listen to me, and now we all suffer.”
My stomach hurt, but my ribs hurt more, and all I wanted to do was lie down and not move. “I’m sorry,” I whispered. “If there was anything that could be done . . .”
“There is, love.”
Dali’s head snapped up at Newt’s soft croon. The demon’s hard, unforgiving expression pulsed through me with a surge of adrenaline.
“Newt,” Al growled as he stood before Trent’s seldom-used wet bar, his shoulders hunched and tense. “Shut the hell up.”
Trent came forward a step. “There aren’t enough mystics looking to her,” he said, but Dali’s vehemence as he thumped a meaty fist on the table brought him up short.
“No!” the older demon shouted. “I’ll not have it! I’d sooner see us dead than be saved with . . . elf magic!”
Newt’s foot bobbed and her cheeks flushed. “Dead is exactly what we will be. Are you blind or simply that stubborn? Demons can do magic through the Goddess. They just don’t like to admit it. They think it sullies them.”
“It does!” Dali cried. “They’re animals!”
Newt simpered. “Aren’t we all, old man. Rachel?”
She extended a slender hand to me, pale and unmarked. I could have sworn that her knuckles had been bruised, and I shied from taking it. Smiling, she turned her reach into a flamboyant gesture. “She’s modest. The girl can do it.”