Trent came closer, and I stiffened until he sat at the far end of the bench. The distance made me feel better, and together we looked out over the Hollows. “How did you find me?” I said, almost whispering it.
He leaned back against the bench and sighed. “Like I always do; I know where you go when you’re in trouble. Bis is worried sick. Your aura has shifted again and he can’t find you.”
I looked at my hand as if I could see it. “I really screwed this up.”
“No, not really.” The hint of his usual confidence didn’t make me feel any better. “Landon has been stopped and the dewar and enclave are both denying any knowledge of what he was doing—though I doubt that is true. No one on the train died, not even the conductor who was shot. Nina didn’t crash the van into the train. The Weres in Cincinnati have found an unexpected, uneasy truce in their unification. Unfortunately it’s against elves. On the good side, the undead are beginning to wake up. You made the news, but the headlines are positive.”
Swallowing hard, I came out with what really bothered me. “I’m sorry I left you like that.” Maybe if I hadn’t, things would have been different.
Trent’s head shifted back and forth in denial, a dark shadow under the trees. “No. Etude can only carry one, and staying wasn’t an option. You did the right thing.” He hesitated. “Even if it was the hardest thing I’ve had to endure to date.”
Frustration pulled me straight, and my back hit the hard bench. “It did no good. The Goddess can absorb the splintered mystics,” I said, gesturing at nothing. “What she can’t handle are those reformatted for a reality-based mind.” He looked at me, and I shrugged. “That would be me. I held them too long. They changed in order to communicate with me. It seems to be a better system than she has, and it began to cascade through her. I fled to keep her from being swamped, but this has happened before, according to her, and as soon as she gets angry enough, she’s going to hunt me down and crush me so that the mystics I’ve corrupted won’t cause her to change.” Won’t kill her, I thought, miserable.
My eyes grew warm, and I wiped them before I could cry. Silent, Trent propped his ankle up on his knee in thought. “If it’s happened before, the demons might know something about it.”
I stiffened. “I’m not calling Al. I have mystics in me! Your Goddess!” I protested, but what worried me more was that Trent and I were a couple, and Al would know that beyond a doubt. It wasn’t just that we had had sex. We were making decisions together. We were shaping the world. Damn it, we were . . . were . . .
Emotion plinked through me as Trent took my hand and leaned over the space between us. “I am not ashamed of who I love.”
My heart pounded, but there wasn’t a whisper of wild magic in him. “I’m not either,” I whispered. It was as much as I could give right now, but it was everything. “Trent . . .”
He stood, his hand slipping from mine. “It will be okay,” he said, but I couldn’t see his face, shadowed in the dark. “Al can lift them out of you. Newt was catching them in a jar, so there’s a way to contain them. He’s been in your mind before, so Al knows what’s you and what isn’t.” Trent looked past me to the turmoil in Cincinnati. “I won’t let him hurt you.”
“You can’t stop him,” I protested, heart thudding. “There’s got to be another way.”
Trent shook his head. “This is the only way.”
“Trent . . .”
“It will be okay,” he said, and my heart just about broke when he tucked a strand of hair behind my ear. “Algaliarept, I summon you,” he said softly, and I jerked back.
“This isn’t safe!” I protested, feeling as if the world was backward. He was summoning Al with no circle, and I was the one complaining.
“No, it isn’t.” Al’s voice rolled out of the darkness, and I stood, heart pounding.
Al was on the wide sidewalk. Behind him, Cincinnati tore herself apart, a suitable backdrop to his elegant crushed green velvet frock, walking stick, and top hat. “Al.” I begged for understanding, but I knew the demon hadn’t grasped the depth of the situation because I was still breathing.
“Help her,” Trent said simply, and by the light of the moon, I saw Al’s eyes narrow.
I flinched as Al strode forward, gripping my jaw to look into my eyes. The mystics rose up, and I frantically demanded be still, be still, be still, terrified.
“Do you realize what you have done!” Al shoved me away.
Trent lunged, catching me before I fell, and we stood before him. Al was pissed, but he still didn’t realize it all.
“Help her,” Trent repeated. “This wouldn’t have happened if you hadn’t turned your back on her.”
“Do not blame this anathema on me!” Al shouted, his voice echoing back from the town houses across the park. “I said to walk away. There’s no solution here! You should have let the world go to hell!”
“They’ve become attached to her,” Trent said, because I was too scared to say it. “You’ve been in her mind. You know what is her and what isn’t. Take out what doesn’t belong.”
The top of the cane cracked as Al gripped it. “and then what?” he said, taking three steps closer. “Put them in a jar? Don’t you understand?” He dropped his head, his eyes holding hate when he looked up. “There is no Goddess!” he said, hammering the words at Trent. “There never was! These voices she says she hears . . .” Al drew back in disgust. “They’re in her head alone. She is insane!”
“Al!” I shouted when he reached for Trent, but Trent did nothing, grim faced as Al twined his gloved hand into Trent’s shirt and pulled him close.
“And you pushed her into it,” Al snarled. But then his expression went empty, and he let Trent go, backing up until he could run his eyes Trent’s full length. “You slept with her,” he said, but it wasn’t a question.
Oh God. Now it was going to get bad.
“You slept with him!” Al exclaimed, coattails furling as he spun to me. “Y-you,” he stammered, unable to find the words. “I gave you everything! And you repay me with this?”
Al recoiled when I reached for him, and my heart seemed to twist. “Al, please,” I begged. “I didn’t mean it to happen.”
Al pulled his lips from his teeth in a savage snarl. “You let it happen.”
My blood roared in my ears, and I wavered as a small band of mystics found me, bringing a vision of the church and a broken water glass, his chrysalis among the shards. “Go away. Go away!” I shouted, waving at nothing. “Go back to her. She wants you!”
But she can only go in the space between space, one thought, and the rest agreed. We like the mass that defines her better.
Al and Trent were staring at me, and I suddenly realized I had screamed it out loud.
“Please,” Trent begged.
Al turned, voice flat as he said, “It’s too late.”
“It’s not—”
“It’s too late!” Al wouldn’t look at me. His eyes were pained, and his hands in his white gloves scrubbed his face. “If she could be helped, she would have done it herself.”
Trent’s expression became hard. “You mean you can’t.”
“That’s right. I can’t.” Al looked at nothing, still not acknowledging I was standing right there. “The Goddess is a myth, a deified energy source. Voices in her head,” he said scornfully. “This is what happens when you listen to the spaces too long.” Now he looked at me, and the depth of his heartache struck me cold. “Your mind invents a reason,” he said softly. “Mystics are a fabrication to explain a disease. This is a psychosis.” Al’s eyes flicked to Trent. “Your wild magic made her insane, and you will watch her die a slow, confused, worthless death. I will have no part in it.”
A psychosis? He thought I was inventing this? “The mystics are real!” I protested, feeling them rise up in me. “You can see them, record them. I’m not imagining this! The things I can do. The things I see. Explain that!”
Al looked beaten as he cast his eyes on me. “Oh, the energy is real. You can collect it. Use it. The voices are not.”
Trent shook in anger. “You will do nothing?”
“Don’t you understand? There’s nothing to take out!” Al thundered.
My heart thudded in my chest, and I was afraid when Al looked at me again, his thick hands opening and closing. I remembered their feel around my throat, and I took a step back.
“But I can help her on her way,” Al intoned, and I backed up farther. “End this travesty. We do not need another Newt.”
He was going to kill me.
“Al!” I exclaimed, backpedaling, but he had me by the throat.
“Go away,” he snarled, flinging a hand out at Trent, and he was tossed to the pavement, face ashen in the moonlight as he pulled himself up.
The mystics rose, swarming like bees. Trent saw them. Al felt them, his expression becoming even more disgusted. They demanded action, that I strike the demon down, that I destroy him with a word. I knew I could do it, but I didn’t. I made them fall about our feet like dust as I hung in Al’s gentle grip around my throat.
“You could have had everything,” Al said, my face mirrored in his goat-slitted red eyes. “Everything and all time. And you threw it away. If you’d left him as your familiar, we would’ve overlooked it, but you freed him, and we won’t allow you to give them a foot on our neck again. This, Rachel Mariana Morgan, will not be tolerated.”
I closed my eyes, doing nothing as his power gathered, tingling between us. I knew to the bottom of my soul that he’d do it. I’d wounded him too deeply. He knew I’d never be any closer to him than we were today, but that I had found love with those he hated was too much.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered, knowing why he’d kept Ceri as a slave for a thousand years.
“It’s not nearly enough,” he said softly.
“Gally!” Newt screamed, and I jerked as my air cut off. “Let her go!”
I choked, eyes flashing open to see her standing beside Trent, horrified.
I clutched at Al’s wrists, struggling for air, refusing to let the mystics harm him. I wouldn’t strike him. I wouldn’t cause his death. Black rimmed my vision, and my lungs burned.
“She looked too long!” Al said, anguish foreign in his eyes. “She drank too deep!”
Newt put a hand on his. It was right before my eyes, the only thing I could see. “Leave.”
“But . . .”
“Leave,” she said again, gentle in understanding. “I’ll finish this. You’ve done enough.”
Finish? I thought, gasping when his fingers eased and I got a breath of air.
“She lay down with him!” Al protested, grip loosening even more. “An elf!”
Newt’s fingers dug into Al’s wrist. Blood began to drip from under her thumb. “I can tell that,” she said tartly. “I knew it would happen. So did you. Why do you act surprised?”
“He is an elf!” Al shouted, and suddenly I could breathe as I found myself falling to the pavement. “A mother pus bucket of an elf! And she freed him! This is exactly how they enslaved us the last time!”
Pain lanced my hip as I hit the ground. Coughing, I rolled out of the way of Al’s boot, finally coming to a stop against Trent. He pulled me farther away as I gagged on the air, my hands about my bruised throat. Newt was inches from Al, looking up as if it pissed her off.
“You allowed it to happen!” Newt exclaimed, one hand waving in the air. “We all watched you do it. She’s your ward. It’s your fault. And I won’t let you kill her for the audacity of being braver than you!” Leaning deeper into his space, she put her hands on her hips. “You are a coward, Al, and you don’t deserve to stand at her side, much less kill her. Go find a place to hide. A deep one. You’re done here. If she’s strong enough to trust him, she’s strong enough to test the rest of us.”
Al’s anger moved from me to her. Eyes squinting, he rocked back from Newt. “We’re done, Rachel,” he said, his words striking right to my core. “Don’t call on me again. You’re no longer my student.”
“Al,” I said, hand to my throat when it came out in a harsh croak. Mystics spun from me, wreathing him with demands he listen, that he understand. This was not what I’d wanted. But he was blind to me and he put up a hand, stopping my next words.
“My name is Gally, and if I ever see you again, I will kill you.” Spinning to make his coattails furl, he snatched his walking stick from the ground. The top stone was broken off, and he left it behind as he walked away, vanishing between one step and the next. Confused, the mystics swarmed where he had been. My focus shifted deeper, finding a burning building.
“If you hurt her, you die,” Trent said above me.
Oh yeah. We weren’t done yet.
He tensed as Newt strode to us, her androgynous robes snapping about her bare feet. “Don’t be stupid,” she said, brushing him aside so she could help me stand. “You called me.”
I staggered upright, feeling dizzy. He knew Newt’s name? “They can’t be fake,” I said as the mystics returned to me. “They’re real. They’re so real!”
Pain arced through me, and I jerked. Eyes watering, I realized she’d slapped me.
