“I’m sorry. I’m sorry,” I said when his brow furrowed and he shifted his grip, hoisting me higher in the hopes that my internal muscles would let go—which they did, seeing as the entire incident had been as fast and as satisfying as a whipcrack. And then I gasped, all thoughts of his discomfort vanishing as I saw the walls behind him. They were glowing.

  “Trent?” I said, and his ruefully fond expression vanished at the warning in my voice. “Are you seeing this?”

  He reached for a blanket, handing it to me as he stood and hoisted his pants up with a serious quickness. My eyes followed the blue tracings of bound energy to the ceiling, seeing the lines arch to a close overhead. It was a cage, and my pulse hammered as I reached for a ley line, relieved to find that I could.

  Not a cage, I thought, realizing it was that protection grid I’d felt yesterday on the stairs. But then I blinked, lips parting when I followed Trent’s attention to the floor. “Whoa,” I said as I took in the room-size circle and the pentagon it held. Most of it was hidden under boxes and furniture, but it was obvious that it was bound by three exterior circles, three mid circles, and three central circles. Glowing glyphs were etched at the corners and almost every free space.

  “Careful,” I said, concerned when Trent touched a line and pulled a haze of blue away.

  “It’s a protection ward,” he said. “We probably triggered it with all the . . . ah . . . energy we just released.” His gaze met mine, his fingers rubbing the blue haze to nothing. “Al made this?”

  I twined my blanket tighter about me, not worried, but discomfited. “I think so, but it didn’t look like this before. I thought it was only a minor protection curse. Why would it show itself now?” I said, feeling uneasy. “We’ve been up here before.” Granted, probably not with that intensity, but damn . . .

  Brow furrowed, Trent touched an elaborate glyph, his sheen of sweat giving the blue haze something to glow against. “The demon-repellent ward I engaged earlier might have peeled off a don’t-notice veneer. Al, huh?”

  I nodded, shocked at the complexity. “Al,” I echoed in a wash of guilt. He hadn’t simply put up a protection ward. He had crafted an ironclad Hodin-free zone where I could sleep without risk, safe in my willful ignorance. “No wonder Hodin doesn’t come up here,” I said, amazed at the complexity of the fading lines. My bedroom had been Hodin-free for four months. I’d thought he had finally learned his boundaries, but it had been Al. Protecting me from him. Protecting me from myself.

  Good demons, bad demons. How the hell am I supposed to tell the difference when they both lie so well? Guilt made my frustration sharp as I grabbed a new set of clothes to take down to the shower. Son of a fairy-farting troll. I didn’t even know when Al had put it up. It looked like a three-day curse, minimum.

  Throat closing, I slumped, my socks and undies in hand. Al had been protecting me even as I hurt him. I had spouted words like compassion and forgiveness, applying them to a traitorous demon slime when Al should have been the one I believed. He was my teacher, and I had walked away thinking the world would spin the way I wanted if I only saw it that way hard enough.

  I need to talk to him, I thought as I glanced at my scrying mirror shelved with my books, then down at myself. Half naked. Sounded about right. Maybe I should get dressed before I try talking to a worldly cosmic power.

  “Shower?” I said, distracted, and Trent nodded, shirt open and pants hardly zipped as he followed me downstairs, his brow furrowed in an unvoiced concern as we left the safety Al had given me.

  CHAPTER

  22

  I stared up at the shadowed ceiling in the sanctuary, my hands folded on my chest, a comforter smelling faintly of Pike pulled to my chin as I pretended to sleep on one of the couches. Trent’s even, slow breaths from the chair beside me were soothing, and I watched the now-familiar pattern of the glow of a car’s lights appear in the corner, flicker through the trees as it grew stronger, and then race from one end of the church to the other as the car went past. Sighing, I looked at Trent.

  He’d fallen asleep about ten minutes ago in the chair beside me, the man going down fast from the lack of his afternoon nap. His slim, bare feet were on the low table, and he slouched in an undignified slump that made me love him all the more. His hand had held mine until a few minutes ago, and I thought it was sweet that he hadn’t wanted to go home in case Hodin showed up. Sweet, but I’d be lying if I didn’t admit I appreciated his presence. Trent’s ward yesterday had only expunged any demon presence. It didn’t stop them, and I only had the original warning on the bell to tell me if Hodin returned.

  Trent shifted and I sat up to move the plate with its cookie crumbs and leftover takeout before his feet could shove it off the table. My elbows on my knees, I stared at Kisten’s pool table in the corner, worry keeping me awake.

  “Rachel?” Trent whispered, and I leaned to take his hand as he reached for me.

  “Go back to sleep,” I said as I stood, his hand slipping away as I pulled the afghan up and around my shoulders. “I’m going to get some air.”

  “Okay.” He slumped down, never really having woken. Midnight wasn’t late for a witch. If I kept to my personal schedule, I wouldn’t go to sleep until two or three, getting up at a reasonable noon. And if I was awake, Al would be.

  Glum, I sifted past Trent’s architect magazines and my Spell Monthly to find my scrying mirror, sliding it out and padding through the church to my beautiful porch, where I could stew under humidity-hidden stars.

  The church at night held an entirely different specter. The garden felt even more alive with bright gleams of light as the pixies darted about, but they were quieter somehow, tending to more work and less play—or at least they would be if Jenks hadn’t evicted Baribas. The sounds of the city were muted under the frogs and crickets. The wind still blew and the trees still moved . . . but the entire space was centered, almost more mine without the distracting light, and I felt at peace as I passed through the now-tidy kitchen.

  The click of the French doors brought a faint wing rasp, and I sighed as Jenks darted up to investigate, his bright red dust of warning shifting to a pleasant gold when he saw me.

  “Oh, it’s you,” he said, and I lifted the scrying mirror in explanation.

  “Sorry. Didn’t mean to give you a start.” I eased the door closed behind me and went to sit on the wide stairs leading down into the garden. The church felt massive behind me—holding my security and everyone most dear. Before me was the black garden trying to release the day’s heat, and beyond that, Cincy herself, the lights and noise bouncing off the haze between us and the stars. I loved it here, sucky weather and all.

  “I miss not being up this time of day,” I said, knees to my chin as Jenks perched on the railing beside me, his glow fading as he tended a small tear in his wing.

  “You’re up because you miss sitting in a baking sauna in the dark?” he said, glancing pointedly at the mirror beside me.

  “Okay. I’m worried,” I admitted, and a smirk blossomed on his angular face.

  “We got this, Rache,” he said confidently. “I haven’t seen Rex claw one thing since you picked up all those pearls. The memory hiccup spell works. Don’t worry about tomorrow.”

  I stared out into the garden, missing the lights of pixy children. “I’m not worried about tomorrow,” I said, my chin dropping to my knees. “I’m worried about yesterday.”

  Jenks’s wings rasped as he fanned them, his feet unmoving from the rail as his gold dust flowed over us. “The past lives in the future, Rache,” he said, and I turned to him, not understanding. “Yesterday is as alive and full of potential as tomorrow.”

  “You can’t change what you’ve done,” I said. “How is that alive?”

  But Jenks shrugged, a faint smile born in memory. “The past is alive,” he insisted. “I chose to keep my son Jumoke, to see something other than fear in his dark hair and eyes. He lives in my past, and because of it, Getty lives in my present.”

  I grimaced, looking at the empty black garden full of too many insects and not enough pixies. “I don’t see how that makes the past alive.”

  “What we remember and choose to act on is not dead, not set in stone,” he said, and my shoulders slumped. “There’s no I did this then, so that will happen now. That question of what we choose makes the past as fluid as the future. Yeah, you made a mistake with Al and Hodin.”

  “Just one?” I muttered, and he grinned, his light brightening.

  “But you’re out here moping about it, so your bad choice is still alive. Change it.”

  “How did you get so smart? You’re like four inches tall,” I muttered, and he laughed, sounding like wind chimes in the dark.

  “Pixy magic, baby!” he said as he rose up. “I’ve got to do a perimeter. I haven’t seen a dusting of Baribas, but Hodin is still at large and he probably wants the stuff in his room. Getty will sing out if anything comes into the church.”

  “You found her?” I said, and he dipped and steadied, sparkles falling from him.

  “She found me.”

  I nodded, hearing a potential lifetime in those three words. Smiling, I dropped my chin to my knees. “Jenks?” I called when he darted away.

  His wings clattered in annoyance as he came back, clearly eager to be gone. “What?”

  I took a breath, then let it go. “Getty did an amazing job organizing the fairies into a tight net of security when we were in the ever-after. I think we should ask her to stay.” Jenks dropped an inch in altitude, and I shrugged. “The past lives in our future,” I said, and his panic eased into confusion. Hesitating, he took a breath as if to say something, then changed his mind and flew off, his dust rimmed in blue.

  My life was in tatters, but I had friends to help keep it together, and knowing that I could still help them convinced me to pull my scrying mirror onto my knees instead of throwing it into the dark garden like a fifty-cent Frisbee.

  I needed Al to overcome Hodin, but he needed me, too, damn it.

  The past is alive, I thought sourly, not sure I believed it. Afghan about my waist, I gazed into the inky black and red sheen between me and my reflection.

  I’d lost count of how many scrying mirrors I’d made until I learned how to find and use the collective without one, but the mirror was etched with glyphs to ensure a more certain and private conversation. I think it was the first curse I’d ever made, the one that had convinced Ceri that I was a witch-born demon, not a once-sickly witch who had survived an elven-engendered genetic defect that should have killed me.

  Peace settled deep as I put my hand atop the pentagram, fingers lightly touching the communication glyphs at the points. It was beautiful, really, and I closed my eyes, setting my thoughts on Al. He’d cracked the mirror the last time I had tried to talk to him through it, but it would still work. Jenks was right. I had to keep the past alive so it could impact my tomorrow the way I wanted it to.

  Al? I whispered in my thoughts, hoping he was awake.

  There was a breath of hesitation, and then, with a satisfying relief, my emotions seemed to double. Al’s feelings of annoyance, frustration, and maybe a little relief slipped into me as if they were my own. What do you want? came his flat thought.

  It wasn’t the best greeting, but he was talking, and I pressed my hand deeper against the cool glass to strengthen our connection. Hodin had become a thorn in my mind. I needed to know what he had done, but after seeing Dali’s grief turn to anger, I was afraid to dig. Um, I thought, and his irritation redoubled as he recognized my reticence and guessed what I wanted.

  I will not talk about it, he thought, a sour sensation rising from not just his thoughts, but a hastily buried memory he didn’t want to share.

  That’s okay, I immediately thought back, and his bitter amusement tinged my embarrassment. He could sense my disappointment. I, ah, wanted to say thank you for the protection glyph encasing my bedroom.

  You found it? Al’s attention seemed to sharpen, and I scrambled to hide from him exactly how the powerful lines had become visible, even if for only a moment.

  Ah, Trent pushed a demon-expulsion ward through the church. I shoved the thought to my forebrain, hoping he wouldn’t dig. I was worried that Hodin was lurking. It stripped whatever don’t-notice curse you had on it.

  Oh.

  His presence went misty, leaving me feeling lacking. So . . . I thought, thank you for keeping me safe from Hodin as I made my big mistake.

  Al huffed, and from the recesses of our connection, I felt a satisfaction born in a wash of heat and the faint image of sparks. A fleeting surprise lifted through me/us as my fingers found the smoothness of the steps instead of the rough-hewn log that Al was sitting on. He was tending a fire, I realized, and I relaxed even more in the hopes that he would sense the peace of my midnight garden. Al, I have harbored him for months. I need to know what he has done. Please. Why do you hate him so much? I thought, my own dissatisfaction twining with his. It has nothing to do with him mixing elven and demon magic.

  It does, he shot back, and a heat of anger washed through us both, Al’s born of the past, mine of the demons’ stubborn resistance. We have simply grown accustomed to your foul quirks and hope that you will outgrow them when you tire of your elven toy.

  Trent is not a toy, I thought, and Al’s presence slipped into a haze of hidden memory. I got a glimpse of heartache and fury . . . and then it was gone, hidden. Al, what did Hodin do?

  The smoothness of an egg seemed to fill my hand, my thoughts drifting to how hot the skillet over the fire was. I sensed a rising guilt and shame in him, and worried, I yanked my awareness away.

  But Al sank a tendril of thought into me, and as I drew my thoughts back to my midnight garden lit by pixy glow and city glare, Al shifted his aura, slipping into a ley line as if it were a warm bath. My mind connected to his seemed to grow and expand. I felt the glory of the universe at his fingertips as he rode the lines, his body reduced to nothing but energy and thought as he fixed on my aura and, with an enviable demon skill, materialized beside me.

  A faint bong from the steeple drifted over the humid night, announcing his arrival. My breath shook as I lifted my fingers from the scrying mirror. Our connection was broken, but I didn’t need the mirror anymore. He was here beside me. The thought it might be Hodin came and went, but I had called Al. I had been in his mind, and there was no way to fake that.

  “Once you agreed to protect him, your ignorance became your only protection,” Al said, his eyes on the unbroken egg in his hand. Shoulders slumped, he sat beside me on the top step, breathing in the bound energy of the city and exhaling regret, his thoughts clearly on the past. “But even that is gone now.”

  “What did he do?” I said, pleading almost, and Al handed me the egg.

  “Hodin’s great betrayal was our failing,” Al said, his gaze avoiding mine. “We let him do it, and he played upon our worst proclivities. He begged me to let him be captured so as to work from within to free our kin. It was his plan. And when it succeeded and he escaped with our captive children, he became a hero, trusted and loved.”

  Al turned to me, and I quailed at the old pain in him. “He brought our stolen, damaged children home,” he said, voice even and without emotion. “And then he said nothing as they began to die. He’d cursed them himself, laying the blame on the elves so we would mount an attack on them in our grief.”

  “My God,” I whispered, wanting to take his hand. The pain was thousands of years removed, but it was still fresh in him, still raw. Guilt rose up, guilt that I was too afraid to ask who he had lost. I didn’t know if I could bring that pain to him. Hodin cursed their children? I thought, horror making my pulse grow fast. “Why didn’t you tell me this before?” I said. “You let me defend him. You did nothing as I allowed him to live in my church.”

  “I told you not to!” Al bellowed, and I shrank away. But his pain and frustration vanished as fast as they had come, to leave a frightening emptiness. “Our trust in him is not a history we are especially proud of,” he added. “And he never admitted if he cursed the children or simply looked the other way when the elves did. The result was the same.”

  How many atrocities are committed from one person turning a blind eye? I thought. Reaching out, I touched Al’s shoulder, my grip on him tightening when he stiffened and then relaxed.

  “Newt never trusted him.” Al’s sigh shifted his shoulders as he stared unseeing at my garden. “And still, we lost nearly half our number before she realized it was the children who were making us ill. Be gentle with us, Rachel. It is a cruel, cruel thing to force a people to watch their children choke on their own breath, unable to ease their passing knowing that to touch them meant they would die as well. That, I believe, is where we lost most, my kin choosing death over letting their children die alone. Those who survived still carry the guilt of seeing their own die without comfort, without touch.

  “And so believing Hodin, we followed him when he promised a way into their stronghold to punish them in turn,” Al said bitterly. “We would have our revenge upon those who hurt us so deep and with such disregard, but as you probably surmised, it was a planned betrayal. We went not to our revenge but to our captivity. He sold us all using the coin of vengeance. If not for Newt, he would have had us all.” He turned, expression empty. “And you want a warrant?”

  “You should have told me,” I said, horrified, and Al slumped deeper into himself.

  “Perhaps, but it is a hard thing to remember. I gambled that you would be safe from his worst impulses as long as you didn’t know the truth and he believed he could manipulate you. Which he did. Now it will be harder. There’s nothing elven you can use to best Hodin. He knows all their lore. More than any elf alive. The only hope you have of surviving him is what’s in the vault. So I ask you now, what are you willing to give, itchy witch, to put an end to such a mind? What will you sacrifice to stop someone willing to do so much harm with such disregard for life?”