Page 133 of Demon's Bluff
A muffled shouting had begun behind the door, and I stood between Kisten and Elyse, fingering the ends of the broken stirring rod. When it mended, we’d be home.I hope.
My breath shook on my exhale and I closed my eyes. I was going to have to join the demon collective to access the curse. Every other time I’d done it, I’d been noticed. The only saving grace was that both instances were in the future. I would have the element of surprise today.
One hand holding the broken rod, the other on Elyse’s shoulder, I reached out a ribbon of awareness, tapping into the nearest ley line through her and Slick. The lines felt different in the past, more convoluted, more complex—more familiar. The soft hum of energy tingled to my extremities and rebounded, and with a careful thought, I slipped a sliver of myself into the demon collective.
Immediately my shoulders slumped as I soaked in the myriad background conversations. It was very much like being in a crowded restaurant, the anonymity of your conversation ensured only by the multitude of other discussions. And like a restaurant, if you strayed too far from accepted norms, you’d be noticed.
Using one of Newt’s spells was like standing on the table and singing “Non, je ne regrette rien.” Using this one would be doing the same, but naked.
My eyes opened and I steadied myself as I checked one last time that both Kisten and Elyse were in the circle. The door panel was beeping, and adrenaline pulsed. They had the code. I had seconds.
Ab aeterno,I thought, and with a little jolt of connection, the circle and everything in it went indistinct, as if viewed through a fog. We were separated from reality, though still connected to our current time.
The Goddess take it,came a bitter, jaded thought as a ripple of awareness went through the collective.Whose turn is it to check on Minias? She’s spelling again.
They thought I was Newt, and a splinter of fear tripped down my spine.
Regressus,I thought, to link the stasis spell to the curse that held my stored energy, the one that would keep me from starving to death on the way home. Sensing it, the slow alarm in the collective became razor-sharp. Outside my circle, a widening crack of light showed.
Who is using my curse!thundered through the collective, scattering the increasingly worried thoughts like dry leaves.I did not put that in as fee-for-use. That’s my private store!
The door slammed open. Scott stood there with my bag in his hand,his bald head shining and two angry witches with him. “I’m sorry,” I whispered, and all three seemed to freeze.
You again!Newt snarled, her thoughts reaching to crush mine.
Prospice!I shouted within my mind, invoking the curse to send everything in the circle forward in time. With a mental lurch, the collective was gone, the beginning of Scott’s shout was gone, everything but what existed in the circle was gone, melted into a gray haze. Agony lanced through my head. Hunching, I slowed the energy influx until the pain was tolerable. My gaze fixed on the broken stirring rod as I held my breath.
Alien and uncomfortable, my stored energy rippled over me. Snippets of conversation flitted just under my awareness, whispering to leave traces of feeling: joy, boredom, frustration, ecstasy.
Elyse?I wondered, my grip on her shoulder tightening. The emotions were familiar, but the fleeting images joined to them were not.
I stared at the broken length of redwood, my synapses beginning to singe as bloodlust poured through me and vanished. An image of a child on a swing in the sun, blond hair and blue eyes. But it wasn’t Kisten. Nor was it his joy that filled me. Thoughts burning, I looked at Elyse’s empty expression. Kisten, too, was unmoving as the days turned to weeks, turned to months outside my circle. Emotions too fast to realize cascaded like ice through me with the roughshod clang of a bell rolling down a hill. It was overwhelming, and I groaned, my grip on Elyse spasming as I hunched over her and Kisten.
“Mend…” I groaned as the scent of burnt amber filled my world. It was my mind burning. I could not shut my eyes, gritty with stardust. I could not breathe, bands of time clamped around my chest. I could not stop. I would make it home. I would make it home to Ivy and Jenks and Al.And Trent…
The rod refused to mend as a faint haze of auratic rainbows pulsed painfully through my leg pressing against Kisten’s back. Kisten was glowing, a glimmer of what I would swear was aura pulsing like a heartbeat as more bloodlust, more heartache, more guilt, more joy flooded through me almost too quickly to be perceived.
That is not my energy,I suddenly realized. These were not my emotions, my life. They weren’t one person’s, but many.The collective?I thought, but it made no sense, even if my energy had been stored there.
And then the broken rod in my violently shaking hands magically became whole.
“Stet!”I exclaimed, the word escaping me in a rough croak of sound.
I sagged as the pain in my head vanished. I fell into Kisten, scrambling to find a ley line through Elyse. Utter silence filled the room, and it was chill. Numb, I tucked the mended stirring rod into a pocket, my gaze coming to rest on Elyse’s slippered foot.
No noise came from beyond the closed door, and the furnace was cool.
“Elyse…”
I fumbled for her shoulder, my tension easing as the energy slipped in through her, rough and painful over my singed synapses.“Surrundus,”I whispered.
“On the other side,” she said, her clear words almost painful in the absolute silence. It was her unvoiced thought, the one that the spell had caught and suspended. And then her eyes met mine. “Did it work?”
“I think so.” I blinked fast, refusing to cry. She was all right. We’d done it, and she was okay. I bobbed my head, and she pulled her gray sweatshirt from her chest and looked down.
“My tattoos are back!” she said, grinning, as she rushed to get to her feet. “Oh, my God. I never want to be eighteen again. Are you okay? That didn’t hurt at all. How are your synapses?”
“Singed, but workable. I took it slow.” Kisten was slumped at my feet. He looked the same, thank the Turn. We were home, but my elation was tempered with the knowledge that, without the mirror, nothing had really changed. It had been a big waste of time, one that was going to cost Elyse her career when she tried to convince them to cut me some slack. I couldn’t stave off Ivy’s grief, but maybe I could do something about Elyse’s coming heartache.