Kim Harrison - The Witch with No Name

He’d slapped me! “Hey!” I exclaimed, almost afraid. He had struck me because I’d used his pain to hurt him. “ You walked away from me. You don’t have any say in what I do anymore, and if you hit me again, I’m going to smack you back!”

Al let me go. I tensed, but he turned away, his back bowed as he went to a cement bench. I hadn’t even known it was there, so covered in a rambling rose vine it was. Head down, Al waved his hand, brushing aside the vines to find a clear spot to sit. The scent of disturbed roses wafted out—one last bid for beauty before the autumn chill pinched the petals free.

He looked broken as he sat there with his elbows on his knees and stared at nothing. My cheek throbbed, and guilt swam up. I deserved to have been slapped. Using his own pain against him was cruel.

“We need your help,” I said, and he looked at me from under lowered eyebrows. My boots scuffed through the leaf mold to find paving as I shifted closer. There’d been a clearing here once—a patio maybe—and I went to sit on a broken statue. It looked as if it might have been a witches’ garden, though admittedly not a very sunny one.

“Why do you care about the undead souls? The demons? Me?”

His last word held a painful vulnerability, and I tried to find a more comfortable position. “Because everyone deserves a chance to come back from their mistakes.” My roving eyes returned to find him sitting among the roses. “I should know.”

“You won’t come back from this one,” he said. “The elves are massed for destruction. Our destruction. The undead souls were the lure and the way. The elimination of the aged undead is a bonus, but it’s us they’re after. We couldn’t beat them when we were forty thousand strong. We are four hundred and thirteen now.”

His head dropped, and I frowned. Four hundred and thirteen? It had always seemed more than that, but perhaps it was the familiars who filled the shops and parties. “Trent stands with us,” I said, and Al sighed heavily.

“It cannot be done,” he said solemnly. “Come with me. We’re weaving a wall.”

“A wall,” I said flatly.

The lift of Al’s shoulders gave away his disdain for their own cowardice, but his jaw was set. “A wall to keep from being pulled back when they dissolve the lines.”

“A wall,” I said again, and he bared his teeth at me, daring me to call them cowards. “Al, walls are prisons. You need to break the original curse.”

“With four hundred of us?” he protested. “It can’t be done.”

I leaned forward, trying to cross the distance with my words. “That’s why you need the elves’ help.”

Al looked at me as if I was crazy, and maybe I was, but I stood, unable to sit any longer. “The elves are modifying an old curse, not making a new one,” I said, words rushing over themselves. “You told me yourself that was dangerous. All we have to do is end it!”

“And in the doing, we put ourselves in the stream itself,” he said sourly. “We will flounder and be lost.”

“You don’t know that!”

“We do!” he thundered, and I stiffened as I heard Jenks’s wings. He was somewhere close, but I said nothing as Al slumped, clearly frustrated.

“We know Landon will be the fulcrum,” I said, pacing now. “He’s in downtown Cincinnati, right by the square. We know his damn room number, Al! Ivy and Jenks can get us in—”

Al sat up, waving a hand disparagingly. “Why do I even try?”

“If we’re with him, we can shift the focus of the charm!” I protested. “Al!” I complained, my feet stopping as he frowned at me.

“There can be only one weaver in a spell that complex—”

“Then Trent and I will be a fulcrum and slant it the direction we want,” I pleaded.

“Rachel.” Al slumped. “We tried that. Their magic . . . It’s too strong.”

“Then we can try it again,” I insisted.

“Their magic is too strong !” he shouted, and I shut my mouth. Sighing, Al held a hand out to me, inviting me to sit down. “It can’t be done,” he said softly, never letting his hand fall, extending it for me.

Frustrated, I stomped over and sat down. “Cowards,” I accused.

“Realists,” he countered, but his anger was gone. The silence stretched. “What do you hope to get out of this?” Al asked, startling me.

“To end the war between you. To bring you home!” I said, and he actually smiled.

“No, I mean what do you want from the world? From everything?”

“Oh.” That was different, and the fire seemed to wash out of me. He’d come here to save me, save me again. “The same thing you do, I guess. A little peace to find out who I am.”

Slumped, Al looked out over the broken clearing. “There’s no peace but for the dead, and even that we’ve found a way to corrupt.”

It was starting to sound like a pity party, and I stood. “I don’t have to listen to you anymore, remember? I have to go. I’ve got to make a scrying mirror before midnight.” Damn it, I was going to have to do this without their help. If I couldn’t convince even Al, then the rest were useless. I strode back to the path, arms swinging.

“Rachel?”

His call was so soft, yet it pulled me to a halt. I didn’t turn, standing there with my back to him, but he knew I was listening.

“You don’t need the mirror anymore to connect to the collective,” he said, voice holding a sliver of pain. “Why do you think I’m here?”

Mystics, I thought, shaking as I turned around to see him still on the bench.

“You haven’t for a long time,” he said, hands clasped between his knees, making him look worried and scared. “We, ah, hate to admit it, but demons are still tied to elven magic.”

My feet scuffed a few steps back. “Maybe it’s not elven. Maybe it just . . . is.”

Al rubbed his forehead. “I don’t remember.”

My hope flooded back, and I came to him, sitting so our knees almost touched, begging him to listen. “Al, I know we can do this. You may be only four hundred, but you have the gargoyles as anchors now. There’s support among the elves, hidden in the dewar. Vivian is trying to sway the witches’ coven. Professor Anders . . .” I hesitated. “Ah, she’s okay, right?”

Al waved a hand and sighed, his regret that she was indeed okay obvious.

“Well, she’s rallying the scientific community,” I continued. “You aren’t alone this time. Four hundred and thirteen survivors, but you are the ones who made it this far. Can’t you convince the rest we have a real chance?”

“It was beautiful here once,” Al said distantly, eyes on nothing.

“Al!” I shouted, then frowned as Jenks’s wings clattered. “I can’t walk away from this!”

“Right here, this spot,” the demon said, his hands beginning to glow. “The fountain was the perfect blending of sound and motion.” I started, eyes wide as a haze shimmered over the broken statuary and realities seemed to shift, focusing in and out until a mossy fountain of fish and antelope took form.

“The moonlight made the water into pearls, and the smell of the night vines was intoxicating,” Al whispered, and I could hear the water, see it. “There were pixies then. That bastard killed them all when she died. It wasn’t their fault.”

He was fingering the pocket where the chrysalis lay, and I couldn’t speak as I looked over a memory pulled from the recesses of time. The patio was new and clean, looking like midnight in the late noon sun. I knew without asking that he was talking about Trent’s mother and dad. “You were here?” I asked. “You knew them?”

“I knew her.”

I leaned forward as the magic faded and reality imposed itself anew and the shattered ruin of the fountain smothered the spell. I could see a fin in the wreckage, and the curve of a graceful leg. All gone. All spoiled.