From behind the door, a wail rose, and Ivy sniffed back her tears. “She knows I have it. She wants it, but it will make her walk into the sun. Rachel, I can’t.”
I jerked when Ivy pulled back, her expression suddenly empty. “You take it,” she whispered, pressing the bottle into my hands. “Take it and hide it.”
“Ivy, I can’t.”
“Hide it where she can’t find it. Rachel, please!”
“It’s mine!” Nina howled, having heard us, and Ivy’s eyes went wide. Shaking, I forced the bottle back into Ivy’s hand.
“That won’t help,” I said, hating my own cowardice.
Ivy’s head bowed. “I didn’t know it could hurt this much,” she whispered to me. “I watched my mother die her first death, and then Kisten passed on.”
Again I pulled her to me, trying to give her strength.
“This is so wrong,” she breathed, but the tears were gone, leaving only an exhausted numbness. “How is your leg?”
“My leg?” We separated, and my heart seemed to break at the distance between us. “My leg will be fine,” I said, almost crying again.
“Ivy?” Nina warbled behind the door. “Please, I need it! Just for a moment. I’ll give it back. I promise!”
Ivy swallowed hard, empty as she stood before me and glanced at the door. “I’ve got her tied up. I was hoping . . .” Her shoulders fell, and she glanced behind me to Al. “I decided that she should have it, even if she walks into the sun.”
“Ivy . . .”
Tears spilled from her anew as her chin lifted. “Even if it means she dies.” Her black gaze found Al. “You all deserve to die in whatever manner the elves can devise. What you have forced on us deserves payment in pain.”
Al became solemn. “The elves killed the maker of the curse years ago.”
“You let him do it!” Ivy raged, and Nina screamed in pain behind the door.
Al held his hat before him, head lowered. “I agree, but we can’t unravel her work.”
A woman? I mused. A woman did this?
“And even if we could,” Al said, gesturing to the door, “enough of the undead would refuse it out of fear, wanting the chance at immortality even if it cost them their soul.” His gaze fastened on Ivy, and she quailed. “You yourself can’t walk away from it. Or you would have let Rachel take the virus from you already.”
“Al, stop,” I said as shame caused Ivy to drop her eyes.
“You like it,” Al said bitterly. “The urge, the lust, the glorious satisfaction of fulfilling that need.”
“That’s enough!” I exclaimed, but my neck was tingling with remembered passion.
Expression holding a bitter betrayal, Al shifted his accusing gaze from Ivy to me. “The curse is power, Rachel, and she knows without it her world would be flat and gray. She’d rather live with pain and heartache than no feeling at all.”
Angry, I got in his face. “That is a sad excuse to cover your own guilt,” I snapped, then dropped back when Ivy touched my arm.
“No, he’s right,” she said, shocking me. Her hand fumbled behind her, rattling the knob. Never turning around, she pushed open the door. “See what your pride has wrought, demon.”
She opened the door to show her bedroom, the cool grays and soothing greens lit by a battery-powered lantern hanging from the dark light fixture. Nina was tied up with soft straps. They were designed for this, but they still cut into her skin as she struggled to be free, her eyes black and wide. Blood marked her clothes, but I think it was from the fight in the ambulance. She hadn’t been dead long enough to be hungry. Though her soul was gone, her aura would remain for a few hours yet.
“Ivy, please,” Nina begged, straining to be free. “Just for a moment. You can have it back, but I need it just for a moment.” Her eyes flicked to mine, then back to Ivy. “I need it now!” she raged, a muffled scream coming from her as she fought her bonds.
“Interesting . . .”
I spun, reaching for the support of Ivy’s dresser when my leg almost gave out. “Interesting?” I snapped at Al. “You son of a bastard! These are my friends!”
Al’s eyes twitched, but he never took them off Nina. “I mean,” he said as he shoved me deeper into the room, “that she knows where her soul is. Your spell bound it so completely that she recognizes it.”
“Give it to me!” Nina cried out, her emotions swinging back to sadness. “Give it to me, it’s mine,” she sobbed.
Ivy dropped to her knees, taking Nina into her arms and hiding her face. She whispered things I couldn’t hear, and Nina’s rage dissolved into a helpless, sobbing acceptance.
My stomach churned. I thought of Bis up in the belfry and Trent probably trying to reach him without a ladder. Before me, Ivy and Nina both ached, trapped in a hell of the demons’ making. The fear of the people in the square rose up in my thoughts, good people so scared they thought the only way out was genocide.
“We have to reopen the lines,” I said, and behind me Al sighed.
“Rachel, I know Newt thinks it’s possible, but it isn’t.”
“To separate them forever from their souls is . . .” I turned to Al, searching. “I don’t know a word that means that depraved and cruel.”
“To say it would break the worlds,” Al said, but I didn’t think there could be a word like that, and he turned as Trent scuffed into view with a sleeping gargoyle in his arms, Jenks on his shoulder. Trent’s eyes widened as he took in Nina tied to the chair and Ivy kneeling in front of her, trying to ground her, bring her back. Seeing all eyes on them, Ivy whispered something to Nina and got to her feet to stand protectively beside her. Her jaw was clenched and I was so proud of her. Even now she was willing to fight.
“No, this was very well done,” Al said as he eased into the room and lifted Nina’s gaze to his by lifting her chin with a careful finger. “Very well done.”
“You son of a bitch.” I shoved Al. He fell back, catching himself on the dresser, his red goat-slitted eyes narrowed.
“Easy, Rachel,” Trent said, but Jenks had taken to the air as well, blade pulled.
“I should have let you all die, you know that!” I shouted, shaking.
Al tugged his suit straight. “Yes, you should have,” he said mildly, pissing me off. “But you didn’t. I have an idea.”
“So do I.” I shrugged off Trent’s hand, feeling braver when Ivy and Jenks fell into place beside me. “It involves you and that crowd at Fountain Square.”
Al’s dismissive look made my face burn. Speculation heavy in his gaze, he turned to Ivy. “What are you willing to sacrifice for her?” he asked Ivy, and my heart seemed to stop at the thoughtful but manipulative tone in his voice.
Ivy’s eyes flashed. “Everything.”
I stiffened. Nina’s head came up, only it was not hope but my fear that roused her. “Ivy, no,” I warned, and Al sniffed derisively, already knowing Ivy’s answer.
“Everything!” Ivy said again, almost grabbing his arm.
Al flicked a glance at me, then back to her. “Be utmost sure. Your needs, your desires, no longer yours alone but wedded to another?” he said, and Ivy nodded, grasping at the barest hint of hope. “What another needs, you must attend to. What another craves, you must find. It will be heaven if you love her or hell if there’s any doubt. It can’t be undone, and you will be responsible for her soul until she dies a second death or you lose yours as well. It’s a chance, nothing more.”
“How?” Ivy begged, and I could take this no more.
“Ivy, he’s a demon!”
“So are you!” she exclaimed, then lowered her voice as Nina began to sob again, calling for her soul. “Tell me,” Ivy demanded of Al, her own fear making her even more desperately beautiful. “I will do anything to stop this.”
My heart thudded as Al was silent, thinking. “Ask her,” he finally said, chin lifting to indicate me.
“Me?” My anger vanished. Jenks’s dust was an uneasy red and Trent’s face was pale.
&nbs
p; “Rachel, please,” Ivy said, and I jumped when she took my hands. She was trembling. “I’ll do anything. I love her!”
“I . . . I know you do,” I stammered, trying to figure this out. Me? Was he serious?
Al took Ivy’s free hand, opening it to show that tiny bottle I’d given her. Taking it, he moved it to mine, closing my fingers about it. I swallowed hard at the stirring I felt within it. Tingles cramped my arm, and Nina moaned, voice raw and raspy.
“I can’t put Nina’s soul back into her body,” I protested. “It’s going to do the same thing it did to Felix and she’ll suncide to bring her mind, body, and soul back in balance.”
“True,” Al drawled, making Jenks yo-yo up and down in impatience.
“Then what, ash breath?” the pixy snarled. “You hurt any of my friends anymore and I’ll lobotomize you in your sleep!”
Al frowned, but Ivy’s hope had kindled in me and Al’s confidence fanned it to a painful brightness. “To remain sane, her soul needs the stimulation of a stable, living body and aura,” Al lectured, as if trying to teach a dull student. “And so . . . ,” he drawled, gesturing for me to finish it.
“I need to put it into someone still alive,” I said, glancing at Trent when he made an abrupt noise of realization. “Ivy, if I put her soul into you—”
“You can do that?” Jenks asked, his suspicion thick.
“Of course my itchy witch can,” Al huffed as Ivy went three shades whiter. “She already put an alien presence in that Were fellow, David, was it? And there was no love there. At least not at first. I think he rather likes it now.”
Yes, David liked the focus. It was made to live through another, the symbiosis complete and beautiful. But Nina’s soul was hers. To graft it to another . . . was that right?
But as I looked at Ivy’s hope and Nina’s ragged exhaustion, I figured what was right didn’t matter much. “She might still need to take in her aura with your blood,” I said, and Ivy grasped my hands. They were shaking, but her need to do this was absolute.
“I don’t care,” Ivy whispered, alive and filled with hope, more beautiful for having seen her despair only moments before. “I want this. It feels right. I love Nina. She . . . loves me. I can’t see her like this, and I can’t end it. Please!”
I felt light and unreal. “I don’t know what it will do to you. What happens when you die? Will both your souls perish?”
“I don’t care!” Ivy shouted, and I turned to Al and Trent, wanting their opinion.
“It’s Nina’s soul, free of her consciousness,” Al said. “Unlike that ill-fated attempt when you, ah, tried to bind with that soul, Ivy likely won’t notice a thing. But there will be far-reaching repercussions from this.”
“I don’t care,” Ivy whispered.
“Well, I do,” I said, very aware of how much he liked breaking people with their own desires. “Tell me why you want this, Al, or nothing happens.”
“Rachel!” Ivy cried, and I clenched my teeth and faced Al squarely. Behind him, Trent and Jenks waited, scared but trusting me.
Al’s smile went wickedly crafty. “Ivy will be the first of a new kind of master vampire,” he said, and Trent made a soft sound of understanding. “A living one. The newly undead will look to the living for their continued existence, much as they do now, but it’s the undead who will be bound to the living, not the other way around. It should impart a measure of . . . morality that’s absent now.”
I hesitated, seeing the hope for the end of a long-kept guilt in him, and Al dropped his eyes, embarrassed perhaps that I knew him so well. “The soul Nina sips from Ivy will be her own,” Al said. “Where is the guilt in that? Freely given, freely held. The undead will lose their clout. It will fall to the living. Where it should be.”
The undead controlled by the living? I thought, seeing the sense of it.
“I want to try,” Ivy said, and I turned to Nina.
Nina stared at us, her gaze pained and her desperation shining. “Ivy can have my soul,” she whispered, voice ragged, in ribbons. “She already has my heart,” she panted, head drooping so her hair hid her face. “Oh God, it hurts. That you might be able to do this hurts. Please. Just do something. I can’t exist like this.”
The need to fix this seemed to warm me from within. My hands shook, and tingles raced through me as Trent slipped an arm around my waist. I felt ill, breathless. “This will break the original curse, won’t it?”
A rare smile holding a long-held pain crossed Al’s face. “As no other thing can, but it must be done on an individual basis and will be reassuringly slow as it filters through the population and gives us something to pay our rent with.”
“The transition will be gradual enough that it won’t destroy the current balance,” Trent said, his expression hopeful as he saw the possibilities in what we were about to unleash. I thought it fitting we’d do it here in a broken church.
“What do we need?” I said, and Al clapped his hands once, making me jump and Jenks ink a bright sparkle of silver and black.
“Salt,” he said, eyes glinting. “Lots and lots of salt.”
Chapter 30
We didn’t have salt, thanks to my kitchen being firebombed, but we did have pixy dust. Jenks was almost his old self as we readied the charm, feeling needed as we moved the furniture to make a large space in the sanctuary. Candles glowed from the sills of the stained-glass window, and Bis slumbered, hanging from the light over the pool table. He’d never woken when Trent transferred his clawed feet to the cold metal, and he looked like a huge bat hanging there. I hoped he was all right, and I promised myself I’d see this through—one thing at a time.
My stomach hurt as Al finished wiping down the old oak floor, his goat-slitted eyes worried as he threw my silk dress into a corner, having removed “excess stray ions” with it. “Ivy goes in the middle,” Al said, sounding unsure. “The spiral is etched outward from her.”
“Ivy?” I called, and I heard her coaxing Nina out of their room. She was still bound, but she numbly sat where Ivy put her. Suspicious, I turned to Al. His motions were too fast, too quick. He wanted this even as his regret and worry grew with every moment. “Why are you doing this?” I asked.
“Jenks, dust a spiral, please,” the demon said, avoiding me, and my eyes narrowed. “Start at the center and move widdershins. Three arms is traditional. And keep enough space so that if Rachel should fall she won’t hit one of the other arms.”
Fall?
“You want it flammable?” Jenks asked, and Al hesitated.
“Ah, no, but the longer you can make it glow the better.”
Hands on my hips, I frowned up at him. “Why are you doing this?” I asked again, and his eyes flicked to mine.
“You’re in the way.” Hands on my shoulders, he pushed me closer to the pool table. Peeved, I watched Jenks happily dust a sparkling silver path, skating a bare inch off the floor as he laid down a glow that I could tell would last a good five minutes. Plenty of time to save or damn a species—and my friends.
“Al,” I prompted, and he turned fast enough to make his coattails spin—if he’d been wearing his usual green crushed velvet instead of his forties suit.
“I never agreed to this,” he said, his distant gaze making it clear he was talking about the original vampire curse. “I maintained that it was unsporting to curse those who had no original intent, but Celfnnah was sustained by bitterness.”
Celfnnah. My eyes widened as I remembered. Al had a ring with her name on it. He had loved her. He had loved her so much that he couldn’t deny her revenge—her dark bile poisoning a thousand lives, a thousand lifetimes.
“If we’re to survive a return to this world we’ve been exiled from, we need to end this. We need to let the pain go and heal, no matter where the source comes from,” he whispered, but his heartache was not for me, but for her.
“Al, I’m sorry . . .”
“And the cost to perform this curse of binding will be exorbitant,” he added, gaze
going everywhere but to me. “It will keep even Newt in new socks. I swear, that woman can put holes in her socks in one afternoon.”
“Al . . .”
“It’s a simple curse,” he said, ignoring that I’d seen his guilt and aching need to move on, to be accepted. “Most of it was prepped when you made the curse to bind the soul in the bottle. You’re simply moving it to a new container. Walk the spiral with Nina’s soul. It will draw it from the bottle as you go, and when you get to the end, you peel it off you and bind it to Ivy.”
Peel it off me? I didn’t like the sound of that. “If it’s that easy, why don’t you do it?”
“Because Ivy is not my friend,” Al said, his hands heavy on me as he moved me to stand right before the beginning of the spiral.
“I’ll do it,” Trent said suddenly.
“Because you, Rachel, are covered in elf shit,” Al amended, dramatically wiping his hand on his suit, “and you’re the only one they are listening to. Walk the spiral. I’ll catch you when you fall.”
He wasn’t talking about me falling because of my leg, and “covered in elf shit” meant the mystics. I believed him. My fingers had been tingling for the last five minutes, but even more telling was Jenks darting about as if nothing was wrong. Even Bis’s color had darkened to his normal pebbly gray, though he showed no signs of waking up. But if the mystics had found me, then the Goddess could, too. Make this fast, Rachel.
My heart pounded. Ivy stood at the center. Her hopeful expression almost hurt. She trusted me to do this right. Nina’s soul was in my hand, like a promise to be fulfilled.
“Plan C, eh? Bind the soul and run like hell,” I said, and Trent tried to smile, failing. Jenks was on his shoulder, and the pixy gave me a thumbs-up. This was for Ivy, for everything she’d suffered, everything she’d told herself she wasn’t deserving of. For her, I would risk it all.
And then I stepped forward, placing my foot on the glowing line.
My breath came with a slow intake, seeming to pull with it the memory of drums echoing against a sky faulted by uncountable stars. A slow lassitude spilled into me as I exhaled, pulling a ponderous beat from the spiral to replace the breath within me. I recognized it, accepted it as mine, drew it in to become one with it so I could bend it to my will. Wild magic.