Page 36 of Demon's Bluff
“Mmmm?” Al ran a finger down a line of text. “Glamoured to throw you off, I suppose.”
“Maybe, but he said he’d be older in the morning. I think it’s a curse. Young at night, old in the day.” I rocked forward to top off my mug. “He looked sixty through the transposition stone, but I couldn’t touch his foot. It wasn’t really there. No wonder they put him on disability. I’m surprised they pulled him back into active duty. He was downright bitter when I asked who cursed him.”
Al’s brow furrowed as he studied the book. “I don’t know any curse that does that.”
“Newt’s time and space calibration curse, maybe?” I offered, remembering how the half-mad demon had pushed the captured soul of an undead vampire forward and back to see if time and space were still running congruently. I had modified it to push a lily two years into the future to torment Constance with a super-scented plant. It had seemed like a good idea at the time.
Al shifted in a soundless sigh. “Perhaps, but Newt’s curse requires direction. It does not wax and wane without prompting.” His expression shifted to one of worry. “Ah, you still have that book, yes? I mean, you didn’t loan it to your—ah, Trent, did you?”
I sipped my coffee, thinking. “Perhaps Scott tried to twist it and did it wrong and ended up sending his body back and forth through time instead of whatever it was he wanted to move.” I frowned, remembering the ache of sending the lily. It had been connected to me, and it drew on my body’s resources to stay alive through the spell. “He must have found a way to pull energy from the ley lines to survive.”
And then Al’s last question hit me.You still have that book, yes?But it wasn’t his words as much as the concern he was trying to hide that struck me. He was worried? About that spell? Why? All it did was move things through time. Badly, if Scott was any indication.
But Scott had done it wrong.
Huh.“Do you think I can use Newt’s calibration curse to return to when the ever-after was still intact?” I said, and his eye twitched. “I pushed that lily two years forward. Maybe I could get the mirror before the ever-after fell.”
“Mother pus bucket!” he shouted, a thick fist slamming down on the demon book to make a flash of power spark. “No. Even if you could, you’d be trying to seduce something from an insane demon. Do you remember Newt’s state of mind then? You will do your hundred years in the ever-after as penance for being uncommonly stupid. Why do you think I gaveyou two books if not to keep yourself occupied? Pay the price and go on with your life. Don’t be uncommonly stupid again. Two stupids do not make a smart.”
I glanced at the hall, my pulse quickening. “You think I could, though?”
Al took a breath to protest, then hesitated, making a soft groan as he pinched the bridge of his nose. “Let’s say you go into the past until the original ever-after exists, then solve the issue of providing your body the two years of resources it will need to return. You will still have to bargain with Newt for the mirror, and she was absolute chaos. It’s too dangerous.”
“And Alcatraz and the coven aren’t?”
“No,” he said as Jenks flew in, drawn by our argument. “Newt’s spell will not send your mind to fill your younger body. It will unwind your body to an earlier state. Your mind is fluid and would remain as it is, but your body will not. The energy demands alone to return will kill you.”
Jenks’s dust flashed an alarmed red. “Whoa, whoa, whoa! Rache, I know what he’s saying here. Remember what happened when you made that lily grow two years in two minutes? There’s no way you can take the long way home. You’d have to hide from everyone.”
“So we add another spell or two to get around the energy needs,” I said.
Al used a single finger to possessively draw the book away from me, closer to him. “And what if you find a way and are successful? Do you remember seeing another version of yourself during that time? No, because you were not there.”
“Yeah, well, maybe that’s because I stayed out of sight.”
But as I paged through the curse book, searching for that spell that spindled auratic energy, I felt a drop of foreboding. “Soon as I get there, I’ll twist a doppelganger charm. Make myself look like someone else. Or I could return to a time when I was out of the city. That trip up to Mackinaw, maybe.”When Kisten was still alive?flickered in my mind. I could see him, but what would be the point other than giving myself more heartache? I couldn’t risk possibly changing anything. He was gone—even his ghost was out of reach.
Oblivious to my thoughts, Al flung a hand into the air as Jenks dropped down, his tiny, angular face pinched in worry. “Rache, you could have died moving that lily.”
“But I didn’t.” I found the curse to siphon energy and began studying it.
“Only because a plant has a tiny metabolic need,” Jenks protested. “You’re talking about a person. Do you have any idea what you consume in a week, let alone two years?”
“Here,” I said as I pointed at the curse I wanted, and Al paused in his huff to glance at it. “I can use this to spindle my life’s energy on the way out, stockpiling it to use when I come forward. Store it in the collective.”
“Right from your soul, eh?” Al said sourly. “This curse is designed to kill, itchy witch.”
“So I modify it,” I coaxed as I waved Jenks’s dust away. He was hovering far too close.
“Rache, I can’t come with you.” Red-faced, Jenks spun as Ivy’s boots sounded in the hall.
I froze, sure she hadn’t heard what we were talking about. She seemed far too lost in her own misery, her face puffy and pale as she took in Al standing at the counter. Her slacks were wrinkled and her shirt untucked, but it was the emptiness in her expression that tore at me.
“Good morning, Ivy Tamwood,” Al said, practically baring his wide, flat teeth at her.
Ivy’s eyes flashed pupil black in annoyance before regaining their usual brown. “What is she doing now?” she asked as she shuffled to the coffee maker.
I glanced at Al, peeved. “I’ve decided to give the coven what they want, proof that I cursed Brad with illicit magic,” I lied. “I’ll be in Alcatraz by the end of the week.”