Page 140 of Demon's Bluff
“Are you okay?” Bis said, his heat finally beginning to reach my core. Still, I could do nothing except stare at the words, fading when the skin of my circle began to shimmer as my soul warmed and my aura became fluid again, rubbing out Kisten’s words like the heat of the sun.
“Rachel?” Bis questioned as the background chatter became louder. My expression emptied as the circle became malleable and Kisten’s words vanished. The words, I realized, had vanished. Just as they had when Newt breathed upon the table.
I dropped my circle, shuddering when the still-cold energy raced through me back to a ley line. Numb, I turned to Elyse, the woman focused utterly on trying to talk to her peers. I had found the mirror. It wasn’t glass or metal or anything shiny at all. An Atlantean mirror were words that were made with the intent to be transient—powerful but fleeting—like the Atlanteans themselves.
“I found the mirror,” I whispered, and Bis’s wings flashed open. “I found the mirror!” I shouted it this time, and the heated arguments faltered.
“Where is it?” The glow about Elyse’s hands flickered as she faced off before Scott.
I shook my head, not willing to tell them the secret. “I found it,” I said, and Al peered at me from over his blue-tinted glasses. “I mean, I know what it is now. I figured it out.” My pulse quickened as I looked at Kisten. “I can uncurse Brad.”
My hand in Trent’s was trembling again, but it was in relief. I could uncurse Brad and get the rest of the coven off my case. Maybe save Elyse’s career.
Scott’s ten-year-old face screwed up in disbelief. “You expect us to believe that you found it this very moment?”
“Newt gave me a riddle,” I said, glancing at Elyse. “Ask her. She’ll verify it. I didn’t understand it until now.”
Elyse blinked, and then her lips parted in understanding. She’d been there when Newt had breathed on the table and sketched a pentagram, claiming she’d done her part to fulfill our deal. Dark eyes wide, Elyse jerked free of Orion’s grip. “She has the mirror. If she can uncurse Brad, she has fulfilled our original bargain and is free of any taint of illicit magic.” Her eyes narrowed in threat. “Or are we going to renege on that as well?”
Scott might as well have been eating slugs, his expression was that sour. “That was the deal,” he said, and the others shifted uneasily. “But you will agree to undergo a thorough debriefing with the intent to detox any—”
“I am not bewitched!” Elyse protested, and Scott’s gaze hardened.
“No, I think you were bedemoned. A little Stockholm syndrome, maybe.”
“Hey!” both Elyse and I shouted, making things worse somehow.
The tension began to rise again, and Al stepped in between us, cane whirling in a not-so-subtle threat at odds with his pleasant expression. “Perhaps we can agree to take a break until Rachel demonstrates the mirror’s effectiveness or not? You gave her until June. It’s November.”
My gaze flicked to the park’s entrance, adrenaline clearing my focus as I noticed the blue and gold lights spinning up the drive. Iceman was gone, and I tightened my grip on Trent’s fingers. “You should go.”
Trent took a slow breath. Hands cupping my face, he gave me a lingering,warming kiss that went straight to my toes. “Keep her safe on this side of the lines, Felps,” he said as he dropped back, his gaze fixed to me. “Or I’ll find you.”
It was nearly the same thing that Kisten had written on the frozen wall of my circle, and by Trent’s hard expression, I knew he had put the same threat behind it. One in reality, one in the ever-after. How was I going to balance this? Because it needed to be balanced.
Kisten nodded, holding himself deathly still. “I know you love her. I know she loves you. I gave my life to protect that. I won’t encroach upon this love. It is alive, and I know mine is dead…even if it is all I have.”
“Kisten…” I breathed, my heartache shifting from having lost him to death to having lost him to time. I would not call what we once had wrong or simple or naive. It had been true.
And yet my gaze left him to follow Trent as he walked away, feeling him take a part of me with him.
Al harrumphed as he watched Trent pace to the ley line and vanish.
“That was fun.” Jenks landed heavily upon my shoulder. “You think they will hold to their promise?”
“They will, or they will suffer,” Al said, loud enough for the coven to hear.
“I need some coffee. Decaf,” I whispered as I turned to see my car right where I had left it three days and three minutes ago. I had the mirror. I had Trent in the ever-after and Kisten in reality and Al in my backyard. Jenks was on one shoulder, and Bis flew above, doing exuberant barrel rolls with Slick until they both landed on my car’s top with a thud and scrape to make Ivy wince.
But as I tugged Trent’s coat closer about me and glanced at Elyse arguing with her peers, it didn’t feel like a win.
Epilogue
The pheromones were understandably intenseas I strode into Piscary’s right before sunrise. There was no waiting line this time of day, night, whatever…But with three undead vampires below perfuming the air with their presence, it had been busy. The air exchanger hadn’t yet caught up, and I doubted it had even been turned on. Most vamps enjoyed the subliminal pheromones given off by the undead, used them like a passive drug to heighten their nightly activities.
The jukebox was playing something both sultry and grungy, and the drinks in hand held their last swallows. A few tables were still occupied by those in the know, and my shoulders eased when their soft conversations hesitated at my entrance, then resumed after a respectful moment of silence and the lift of a glass. Even though I’d been back for several weeks, it still feltverygood to be home.
And Piscary’s, despite all the drama that had taken place here, did feel like home. From the six varieties of ketchup openly on the table to the tiny tomato lights over the bar to the picture of a rat and mink standing on the gas tank of an X-wing 2000, whiskers pushed back by the wind, Ivy driving.