Landon’s expression was numb as I held the pop out. “You have pixies in your church,” he said as he took it.
“And a gargoyle in the steeple,” I said, nodding toward Bis. The gargoyle was slugging his soda in one go, and I hoped he would contain himself in the coming belch. “They’re part of our security,” I added. “You remember Bis, right?”
Landon hardly looked up, his gaze unfocused on the bottle in his hands. “May your updrafts all be warm.”
“And your downdrafts few,” Bis belched, earning a titter from the ceiling.
Nice. I wished they’d all leave so I could tell Landon his problem wasn’t going to become mine. “I’m sorry about Bancroft,” I said, thinking I could manage civility, holding my expression bland at the memory of his charred bones.
“He died a hero.”
I waited for more, and in the silence, I took a sip of cola and set the bottle down. The soft clink seemed to stir Landon, and he took a deep breath. “You’re probably wondering why I’m here,” he said as he set his bottle down untasted.
“No, not at all,” I said lightly. “I just figured you’re on a walkabout. It must have been hard getting across the river with the bridges closed.”
Grimacing, he wiggled his fingers to indicate magic. Across the table, Bis had his bottle angled high, a long, sinuous black tongue reaching all the way to the bottom for the last drops. “I came to apologize,” Landon said, hesitating when he noticed Bis.
Wow, an apology, I thought sarcastically. I hadn’t trusted him before, and this only strengthened my suspicion that he was up to something. A man like Landon didn’t cross security lines to make apologies unless he wanted something.
“For what I said earlier,” he said, eyes flicking up to mine. “Just because your aura is black doesn’t mean you’re immoral. I shouldn’t have taken a reading without your permission.”
Thank you, I thought, but didn’t say it. With the crack of snapping glass, Bis took the top off his bottle, jaw moving sideways as he ground it to a pulp. It was a show of aggression intended to cow Landon, and it seemed to be working.
“It was inexcusable and . . .” He hesitated. “I need your help.”
“Uh-huh.” I was so not surprised. I could set aside my dislike for him in order to see an end to this, but I didn’t know what he thought I could do.
“You talked to the Goddess,” he said, his eyes unable to hide his anger even as he tried.
Oh. That. “Who told you? Trent?” I asked, peeved. That was rather personal information, but perhaps, again in the name of seeing an end to this, he’d deemed it acceptable.
“I was wrong.” Landon’s gaze flicked to Bis when the kid took another tinkling bite of glass. “It isn’t blasphemy for you to commune with the Goddess. If it was, you wouldn’t be able to do it. I was jealous she chose to speak directly to you.” His lips twisted, and the scent of hospital drifted to me, a tantalizingly familiar scent of electronics and dust just under it. “You don’t even believe.”
Not trusting the soul-searching truth spilling from him, I leaned back with my cola. “Who told you I don’t believe?”
“Then maybe I don’t believe,” he said, but I wasn’t buying it. “It came too soon,” he said as Ivy scuffed to a halt in the hall, listening. “They want me to take his place. I can’t tell them I don’t even believe!” Angry now, he met my eyes. “Where do you get your faith!” he demanded. “This isn’t even your religion!”
This was not at all comfortable, and I looked at the night-mirrored windows as I picked my words. As much as I distrusted him, he was an elf skilled in a magic that I wasn’t familiar with. “She’s not a goddess,” I said, watching his mood evolve. “She’s a communal mind that ancient elves deified, like the Egyptians deified the sun. Even so, I’m not going to try to talk to her. Even when she’s all together, she’s insane.”
Insane wasn’t quite the right word. Oblivious to her impact on others, perhaps. Or adhering to a standard that didn’t apply to creatures of flesh and a limited life.
“But you have to!” Landon exclaimed, and I crossed my knees, tuning him out. Bis turned a threatening black, and Landon drew back, stymied. “Rachel, it’s your aura the straying mystics look for. It’s your amplified aura resonance they’re being lured into captivity with. You can talk to her. Please,” he said. “We have to stop this. If you can talk to her, the sane part, not the divided portion that broke Bancroft, maybe you can convince her to not send any more out through your line.”
It made sense, but seeing Bancroft crazy from just a splinter of her was a heavy warning. “No, I’m sorry,” I said, and he fell back into the cushions, looking not defeated but annoyed.
“Landon, can I call someone for you?” I said, wanting him out of my church. “Trent has a helicopter. He can get you out of the Hollows, wherever you want to go.”
“I can’t leave,” Landon said indignantly, and Ivy came to stand just inside the sanctuary like a soft and certain threat. Landon’s brow wrinkled and the hospital scent thickened as he became more determined. “You can end this. The waves, the sleeping undead, everything. If they wake up, your roommate and her girlfriend will be safe. Isn’t that what you want?”
Ivy’s tight expression made it obvious that that was what she wanted. She wouldn’t ask me to risk my sanity for it, but I might risk everything for her shot at happiness. No vampire should be afraid of the dark.
Something didn’t feel right, though. He was too eager and not enough afraid. Unsure, I looked at Bis, stray bits of glass that had fallen to his skin sparkling in the artificial light. “Let me call Trent,” I said, and Landon stiffened.
“No!” he said, then lowered both his voice and his eyes. “No,” he reiterated, easing back in the seat. “He’d interfere. Ruin it.”
Trent doesn’t know Landon is here. My eyes narrowed in suspicion.
“We don’t need him,” Landon said as he reached for that bag. “I can do the ceremony right here. I have everything I need.”
Even the goat? I wondered, but Ivy wouldn’t have let him in here with a knife.
Ivy slipped closer, her long hair draping down to almost touch me. “Want some help cleaning the living room, Rachel?”
I held my breath, not wanting to take in the pheromones she was kicking out. “You really think I can—” I started, and Landon pushed forward to the edge of the chair, eyes alight.
“Yes!” he exclaimed. “You’ve talked to her before. She recognizes you.”
His jealousy was obvious, and I felt a flash of pity. It was hard when someone achieves without apparent sacrifice or effort that which you’ve strived your entire existence for, doubly so when the person never even wanted it. “You think she’d listen to me?”
“It’s worth a try.” With a renewed enthusiasm, he pulled the bag closer, eyes flicking to Ivy when she sat where she could see both of us. Bis, too, seemed to settle in, and the pixies flew out, probably to tell their dad. “And it isn’t difficult,” Landon said as he set a clear crystal and etching sand on the table. “We do it all the time. Usually we only get a hint of a response, because all anyone can attract is a bare fraction of her attention. It’s only lately, when the waves have concentrated her thoughts, that we’ve actually gotten a real and irrefutable connection.”
Like the one that made Bancroft insane? “You know what? I’m going to call Trent,” I said, reaching behind me for the phone in my back pocket.
“No!” Landon blurted out, then bowed his head submissively when Ivy’s eyes darkened. “I’m sorry. He’ll turn it into a committee decision, and I simply want this to go away.”
Jenks hummed in, his garden sword hanging from his belt. “I think you need to go away,” he said, landing on the table with his feet spread wide and hands on his hips.
Landon’s face scrunched up in compromise. “What if I do the summoning? Will you just watch? Tell me maybe what I’m doing wrong? If we could get her to stop sending her thoughts through your line, the waves would end and the masters would wake up.”
Ivy and I exchanged questioning looks, and Jenks’s dust pooled under him, fanning out when he rose. “I don’t like this guy,” he said, and I noted Landon’s brief second of hidden anger.
I didn’t like him either, but I’d risk a lot to bring an end to this, to end to Ivy’s heartache. “What does it entail?”
Exhaling, Landon put on his spelling cap and ribbon. “I’ll show you.”
Jenks walked, no, strutted, across the table, poking the tip of his sword at the bag of scribing sand. “It looks like the same stuff you used to use to summon Al.”
Nodding, I sat back in my chair. More proof that demon and wild magic had a common source, perhaps?
Moving quickly, Landon scribed a plate-size circle on the coffee table, the sand hissing down with a smooth motion that spoke of years of practice. A triangle went around it so that the edges touched in three places, and then a second circle around that, nesting the three glyphs together. The clear crystal went into one of the spaces between the outer circle and triangle, a knotted bit of hair in the centermost space. If it was like demon magic, he’d probably want to put something in the tiny space above it.
“Ah . . .” Landon looked up, hesitating. “I need something that just died. The fresher the better.”
“I take it back,” Jenks said. “This is nothing like summoning a demon.”
“You want a corpse?” Ivy said, aghast.
“No!” Pointy ears reddening, Landon grimaced. “A bug. A fly. Anything that was once living. She needs something to animate. Unless you want to volunteer to be a vessel?” he said. “That’s what Bancroft did.”
My chin lifted. No wonder Trent hadn’t wanted to talk about it. Using dead things was usually black magic.
Jenks took to the air, his dust an eerie green. “Jumoke killed a hummer at sunset. I’ll be right back.”
Okay, I really wasn’t liking this. “Your goddess converses with you through zombies?” I said, and Landon scowled, ignoring me as he used a magazine card to fix the sand that Jenks’s wing draft had displaced. “I said, your goddess converses with you through zombies?” I said louder, and Jenks came back in, saving him from answering.
“It’s been dead for about an hour,” the pixy said, dropping it with a tiny thud.
“Perfect. The neurons will still be active.”
I watched, distaste growing, as Landon casually moved the tiny thing to the top of the triangle, setting it inside the larger circle, but outside of the smaller one. “And you questioned my morals?” I muttered.
Bis resettled himself, and I wasn’t surprised when I felt Landon’s tap on my ley line out back. My nose wrinkled. It really wasn’t my line, but no one else ever used it. It was Newt’s, actually. My unease grew when Landon’s eyes found mine with a fevered intensity, the spilled sand lines seeming to ripple into themselves as he murmured, “Ta na shay. Ta na shay, enmobeana. Ta na shay, mourdeana. Ta na shay, eram. Ta na shay.” His breath whispered the words into nothing, but the awkward rhythm he was tapping continued, sort of a three-beat, two-beat, three-beat, three-beat.
Shoulders stiffening, I twisted my lips as something not altogether unpleasant slowly crept through me.
“Ah,” Jenks said as he hovered beside Ivy. “Should your auras be glowing like that?”
“My aura is glowing?” I said, panicking.
“Yes,” Landon said, the rhythm never hesitating. “That means it’s working. Quiet. Ta na shay, enmobeana.”
I jumped when Jenks alighted on my shoulder. “His is glowing too, Rache. I think it’s okay. Oh. Hey, it quit!”
“Yeah?” I squeaked, feeling something sort of peel off me with the pinch of a scab lifting away. The mystics, probably. “Look at that!” I said, pointing at the crystal. It had hazed purple. “Dude, it’s the same color as her eyes!”
The tapping hesitated. “You’ve seen her eyes?” Landon asked bitterly.
I really needed to learn how to keep my mouth shut. “Ah, in a dream?” I said, and he resumed the tapping beat, jealousy making his motions fast.
“Ta na shay, mourdeana,” he said, sounding almost vindictive.
Jenks’s wings fluttered, and I shuddered at the feel of them on my neck. “Whoa. Anyone else feel that?” he asked.
Ivy gasped, and my eyes shot to the hummingbird. It lay on the table, wings moving but never taking to the air. A quick look with my second sight showed it was flaming with a white aura. Landon’s eyes were wide, his cheeks flushed as if he hadn’t thought this was going to work. “Rache . . .” Jenks whispered. “This don’t feel right.”
I was tending to agree with him. Landon was sweating, and we all jerked when the hummingbird lurched into the air, never leaving the tiny space in which it had been placed. The head wasn’t quite level, and it truly didn’t look alive.
“It’s working,” Landon whispered. “My God, I’ve never seen this strong a connection.”
My eyes dropped from the bird, now leaking blood from the wound it had died from, to the curled and knotted hair in the center. It was a place of honor. My jaw clenched. There was no way you could put a person into a glyph this size, but hair was often used as a bridge.
